The Elephant In the (Archaeologist’s) Room: Vignettes from the Indian Subcontinent

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Elephant Archaeology" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Within the panoptic theme of elephant archaeology, this paper employs the prism of material remains to recapitulate the journey of the pachyderm in early Indian history and culture. In a land that is home to the largest population of Asian elephants, bones tell their own tales and so does iconography. While faunal remains affirm the antiquity and close association humans have had with this enigmatic species, embedded in the visual archive are discreet cues to sensibilities ranging from reverence to persecution that have defined human interactions with the mega mammal across millennia. In the quest for tangible relics that reflect how the animal was perceived and engaged with in antiquity, my enquiry commences with a synthesis of faunal evidence chronicling the human-elephant interface in diverse cultural contexts. It then proceeds to unsheathe glimpses of the mega herbivore from an impressive repertoire of rock paintings, terracotta, and stone sculptures found in different temporal and geographical settings in the subcontinent. By integrating these elements of the archaeological record, my narrative attempts to sift through the rich but complex layers of a relationship fraught with paradoxes.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Elephant Archaeology

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 50957