Mixing Times: Excavating Shared Pasts in Contemporary India

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

As material forms become central to the ongoing formulation of history and national identity in contemporary India, archaeology is acquiring an increasingly prominent place in the popular imagination. Initially motivated by the current regime’s interest in ascertaining the provenance of and recovering buildings allegedly usurped by Muslims, numerous organizations have emerged with the aim of providing archaeological education to the general public. This paper draws on ethnographic work with archaeological activists working to develop an appreciation of 'sanjhi virasat' (shared inheritance), which is advanced as a national treasure to which both major religious communities (Hindus and Muslims) have contributed and is therefore meant to be nourished across religious divides. Through practices of archiving, publicizing, and memorializing, the activists attempt to put forward a composite history that counters ascendant majoritarian narratives. To understand their efforts, I bring archaeological writings on cultural mixture into conversation with archaeological concerns on temporality. While prevailing scholarly work seems to account for mixture by pluralizing time and celebrating multi-temporality, the paper asks how multiple temporalities may coexist but in tension, premised on a denial of the other. What conceptual resources are available to archaeology to address such a conflict?

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39819.0