TeaThe Harappan excavations, which began on 5 January 1921, stimulated a new curiosity among a new group of young archaeologists in India. In the years following this achievement, new evidence was found that opened the door to the unknown. By 1924, it was formally announced to the world that excavations were being carried out here Harappa And Mohenjodaro The antiquity of the subcontinent has been pushed back to 3third millennium BC by bringing to light a buried civilization with distinctive and unknown cultural characteristics.
Eventually the notion of civilization, hitherto unknown, became the focus of this work. As a result, many of us were left to chase civilization. There is a trend going on where the Harappan civilization has become the center of historical discussion and people are finding their roots in this first wave of urbanisation. This civilization has left a huge mark on the culture-scenario, and we are very grateful for the progress made in that time. But the truth is that it is culture that builds civilization.
The two words—civilization and culture—are often used as synonyms of each other. And there hasn’t been much discussion about how these phrases should be used in an archaeological context. In fact, I too have struggled with it. In this week’s column, we look at the meaning and importance of both in a country with such a diverse archaeological heritage as ours.
Read also: What came after the Harappan civilization? This small village in Haryana has the answers!
archaeological culture
What comes to your mind when you hear the word ‘culture’? Are they the morals and values that you learn, or the traditions and customs that you follow, or simply the sum total of everything that gives you an identity? According to Edward Burnett Tylor, an anthropologist who is credited with defining culture in 1871, Culture “That complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morality, law, custom and other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.” In short, according to Tylor, culture is the sum total of everything that human beings have learned to exist, everything they have produced to survive and everything they have inherited.
Culture is complex and there is no single definition that can do it justice. When I was first introduced to the term, I was asked to look at ecology as it governs the way we live, what we eat, what we wear and many more. Revolving around ecology is our subsistence pattern and then comes our traditions and customs, thus culture is defined as an adaptive behaviour. Interestingly, each of these aspects of culture has an intangible side, which is transferred in the form of knowledge, and the tangible side forms a major component of culture. archaeological culture,
The use of the word ‘culture’ entered archeology in the 19th century. It was used to describe the various groups that were distinguished on the basis of the archaeological record from a particular site or region. In other words, material culture – artifacts and remains from a specific time frame and within a specific geographic area that are classified and grouped together. Once classified, an equation is made between artifacts and human culture by making the assumption that artifacts are expressions of cultural ideas or norms.
Since the beginning of archaeological investigation in the subcontinent, most archaeological cultures have been named after specific types of pottery. For example, the Painted Gray Ware (PGW) culture is named for the fine gray pottery with painted motifs that defined technological advances in ceramic manufacture. In the Northern Black Polish Ware (NBPW) culture, which is brown/black pottery with a glazed slip, glazing was a new feature in the ceramic assemblages of the region. There is also an Ocher Colored Pottery (OCP) culture, which as the name suggests is classified on the basis of a type of ocher colored pottery. Stone Age cultures are also classified on the basis of stone technology and their gradual development/evolution such as Palaeolithic culture is translated into Old Stone Age. Similarly, Neolithic culture and Megalithic culture, translated into Neolithic Age with the advent of agriculture, are named after megaliths.
It was initially thought that these artefacts that emerged in assemblages, especially in the case of the Ceramic Culture, are linear and succeed each other. For example, OCP is replaced by PGW, which is replaced by NBPW, as found at sites such as Hastinapura and Ahichhatra in Uttar Pradesh. But today, fresh investigations and new dates have proved that many of these ceramic cultures (not only those mentioned here) were not always laid out in a linear fashion but merged with each other. For example, we now know that PGW and NBPW co-existed.
Such new data and our evolving understanding of the past raises the question of whether differences in identity are not always expressed through ceramics because identity is multidimensional. To what extent can we take ceramics as the ultimate marker of identity and follow the rule of thumb to classify artifacts?
As someone who has been working on ceramics and excavating trenches for over 10 years, I am now compelled to question whether societies give careful consideration to the material and non-material characteristics of their culture. It is wise to paint over a single ceramic type without doing the whole thing. Archaeological ideas have evolved over time and it is now widely understood that similar materials do not always belong to the same society. And disparate material goods don’t always indicate a different society.
culture is not civilization
Civilization, unlike culture, is defined by certain parameters. The term is derived from the Latin word ‘civitas’ or city which directly links it to urban settlements. It is a complex society made up of various cities with cultural and technological advances. Society is divided into specific jobs, so not everyone needs to focus on growing their own food. It has specialization and class structure, trade matrix, art and sophisticated architecture/monuments.
According to this definition, the earliest civilization of the subcontinent is the Harappan civilization. The presence of urban cities like Harappa, Mohenjo-Daro, Dholavira, Rakhigarhi, stratified settlements, presence of complex trade matrix, expression of art and sophisticated architecture and most importantly the presence of script have helped the civilization to attain the title .
Not every settlement within the realm of civilization is of an urban nature. There are also rural, semi-rural, industrial and agro-pastoral settlements. This diversity is unified by cultural traits that make Harappa a unique example of civilization. Here too, cultures create civilization, not the other way around.
Taking the case of other archaeological cultures, most research is based either on sites or on a particular geographic region, lacking evidence for many of the parameters that make them a civilization. The PGW culture spread over a vast area from Bahawalpur in Pakistan to Vaishali in Bihar, but our knowledge of its social complexities, trading activities, regional diversity and many other things is limited. Based on the classification method, we know only about some aspects of the archaeological culture.
Having worked on several PGW sites and their cultural material, especially ceramics, I know we have a long way to go before we can call this a civilization. However, some scholars have gone ahead and lumped together several such ceramic cultures and termed it as the Ganga Civilization because these cultures are in the Gangetic Plain. This might have been an interesting way of looking at cultural variations, which over a long period of time differed based on ceramics. But only time (and a lot of searching) will tell.
Disha Ahluwalia is an archaeologist and Junior Research Fellow at the Indian Council of Historical Research. She tweets @ahluwaliadisha. Thoughts are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)