Lost cities and fortunes found: making an archaeological breakthrough | India News – Times of India

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Excerpts from the interview:
Q: Why don’t you tell us in a nutshell what ‘Finding Forgotten Cities’ was about?

A:

When I began the research that eventually culminated in Finding Forgotten Cities, it did not begin as an investigation into how the Indus Civilization was discovered. By the way, I was thinking of doing a biography of John Marshall, Director General of the Archaeological Survey, who actually announced the discovery of the Indus Civilization on September 20, 1924. So, you know, a little over 100 years ago. years ago. And I thought it would be in the “life and times” genre. Coincidentally, when I started looking at the material that was in the archive room of the Archaeological Survey of India, there was so much material that I thought could actually be woven into a story surrounding the discovery of the Indus Civilization. This is because the story itself covers a large part of Marshall’s career. And what ultimately emerged from these files was very different from the given story that people thought of when they thought of the discovery of Mohenjo-daro. And Harappa.
Q: What were the first things you discovered during this research?

A:

I think there were several. My most favorite bit concerns the Italian Luigi Pio Tessitori. I knew that he had worked in Bikaner and had visited Kalibangan, but I did not know the whole story about the fact that he had excavated Kalibangan, a Harappan city as we know it today, the first Harappan city excavated after Alexander. Cunningham’s 19th century excavations at Harappa. And he had discovered seals there that looked exactly like those from Harappa. He actually couldn’t get the credit he deserved because he died at the age of thirty after contracting the Spanish flu. He died in Bikaner, and he is buried there.
The second thing, which was very new to me, and again this is about another individual who is much better known. Rakhal Das Banerjee. Rakhal Das Banerjee was the excavator of Mohenjo-daro. But I didn’t realize that when he actually went to excavate Mohenjo-daro in the winter of 1922, he knew it was his last season in that part of India. That was because he had been involved in all kinds of financial irregularities. So he had been given permission to excavate at Mohenjo-daro, but it was purely by chance that within the first few days these seals were found under the platform where you have a large historic Buddhist stupa. And he was trained as an archaeologist. So he immediately realized the importance of what he had discovered. This was once again a story I was not aware of. The other thing that came as a big surprise to me was the pressure under which the Archaeological Service worked. Non-commercial departments in the British Raj were always under threat.
Q: In the hundred years since this research was made visible, how can archaeological digs be made more cost-effective? Would new tools, such as AI, help in this way?

A:

I don’t know how AI would help, but I can tell you the history of the Indus Civilization after independence, which will provide some insight into the shifts that have taken place in the way archeology is practiced. If you think about a Mohenjo-daro or Harappa excavated in the 1920s, you actually didn’t have specialists from elsewhere as part of the team. So that, for example, when skeletons were found, they immediately fell into disrepair because you had no anthropologists there. Today, on the other hand, you have these large multidisciplinary teams. So I think there has been a change in the way excavations are conducted. I don’t think the problem really has to do with money. The problem lay in the publications. There are just so many cities where we still don’t have printed copies of reports. So today, if you want to know more about a Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, you can go to these big books and get all the details. But we don’t have any similar parts published on Rakhigarhi or others.