Indigenous Archaeology in India: Prospects for an Archaeology of the Subaltern

In this book the author presents his findings connected with the archaeology of the Rajmahal Hills (Jharkhand State, north-eastern India), and discusses the wider relevance of his surface archaeology approach to the archaeology of the rest of the tribal areas of India. He also approaches the issue of a gendered study of rock-art and landscape archaeology both of which again fall within the domain of tribal archaeology proper. The author also has a keen interest in the theory of history and archaeology and writes about this subject in several of the chapters. Further sections engage in theoretical debates regarding the relationship between history and archaeology. The study concludes that it may be possible to delineate a separate domain for the archaeology of the tribal areas – called 'subaltern archaeology'. The present work breaks further new ground in historical and archaeological research in terms of the fieldwork undertaken in the Rajmahal Hills and elsewhere in India: the novel idea being that the tribal population of India does have a long-term past – an issue thus far relatively rarely investigated.