Speaking Archaeologically™

As early as in Season 1, two people from sister colleges (and competing sister colleges at that) were paired together for  two tasks, just like the rest of their peers. What the Panel did not know back then, while making this random sorting of partners, was that this would be one of the most powerful and reoccurring partnerships on SA Volunteers. "Ideally, you partner with one person only once as a Volunteer, simply because, we want everyone to have a chance to work and interact with each other," says Shriya Gautam, who plays the head honcho of all the tasks allotted to the volunteers. This was a rule Vedant Chandel and Rakshanda Thakur were not going to follow... "Not because they are such rebels, but because, somehow, they always end up being sorted together, in the most serendipitous ways despite the best of our efforts," the Panel answers, admitting that maybe it's not such a bad thing after all. Vedant was labelled the Panel's Favourite...

A few days ago, the SA Scribes (official blog writers for SA) decided to interview some of the Volunteers,  who have been a part of SA in the past or are still actively engaged in the tasks.  The idea was to acquaint all our readers and followers with what SA actually does and what Volunteering for it is all about?  Does one need a background to do all the tasks? What made them join in? Let's find out in this exclusive interview by Scribe Dixita, who talked to 4 such volunteers: Anubhavpreet Kaur Nirankari SA Volunteer since November 2015 Q.1 What made you join SAV? ANUBHAV - I had always been passionate about archaeology and the concept of SA was new. TANYA- I found about Speaking Archaeologically  from a poster in a college and it seemed so interesting and something I could learn a lot from. So,  I joined it. Q.2 In your opinion does one need historical/ archaelogical background to join SA? TANYA- Definitely not. I'm from a Commerce ba...

August 2015 If you were to pass by Jammu City in the Northernmost Province of  India, buzzing busily with traffic and streets bustling with people, yoh wouldn't expect the city to hide one of the most beautiful palatial ruins of Dogra Architecture. No, not even the locals could tell you if there's such a place at all! There are temples, here, oh yes! And an old Fort. And some old Royal Gardens.  And of course, the famous twin palaces of Amar Singh and Hari Singh, which serve as a library and a hotel respectively but that's it! Off you go, now!  Chop, chop!  Move your car, you're blocking traffic! Jammu is a city with maddening crowd milling over and pouring down on you from everywhere.  For most Indian Army Brats like myself, however, Jammu has been a second home and no matter how many times you've been there, you'll find your way back in there, one among the many, lost in that crowd. Everything changes in Jammu with every visit and yet, nothing do...

                                              Tuesday, 27 October, 2015 Dear Diary, I am in Goa, at last (which explains the absence on the writing front!) At Aguada Fort We reached Goa on the 25th and I've been busy shopping and exploring the beaches, it's not a historical trip so that is what we do most of the time. Today, though, Aguada Fort was on the itinerary and I was all excited and thrilled about it, of course,  because of my unending love for historic places. The ulterior motive though, is because it is my first week volunteering for Speaking Archaeologically and  I am the only one, to have taken an exemption from the very first task because of the trip. I felt awful, but then my task in charge, Shriya Gautam, gave me a list of places I could gather information about, for SA and make up for the exemption.  Aguada Fort happened to be o...

Where do I begin about the whole Museum Visit! Okay, so we had a Coinage Workshop. A task was assigned to all of us to present our observation sheets based on our enlightenment on the subject by Shriya. A date was settled for a next SA meet in the Museum of Natural History in Chandigarh. So, we all met met again; this time, better acquainted with each other. Being slightly behind the schedule due to losing the direction, we lost a bit of the wisdom shed by Shriya on the origin and evolution of life on Earth, as we know it today.  The Cyclorama - Evolution of Life is housed on the ground floor of the Natural History Museum. The geological landscape paintings illustrate the origin of earth, evolution of life from unicellular organism to multi cellular plants and animals through the Archeaozoic, Paleaozoic, Permian, Devonian, Triassic, Jurassic, Oligocene, Miocene and Pleistocene periods. The Cyclorama - Evolution of Life International Doll Museum We were divided...

Or shall we call it, The Second Half of the Workshop on Coinage ? I am very Shakespearean about names. What's in a  name after all?  I am sure the whole thing would still be a workshop on Medieval Painting even if it happened right after we finished working with those gorgeous coins.  So, there we were, still at The Rumour Mill , fed and watered and finally ready to start working on the gorgeous Basholi and Kangra Paintings, Speaking Archaeologically had been lucky enough to procure from private collections. Now to say that those paintings were a work of art is an understatement! The phrase"work of art" doesn't even begin to describe the intricate brushwork and the gorgeously innovative use of molten gold and silver for painting, that these paintings employed so heavily. Humayun, in the court of Shah Tahmasp I I suppose, I cannot  leave a bit of the history of these paintings out , if I have to do justice to what we did on the workshop. So, basica...

One of the first things we'd been hearing about SA Volunteers, when we enrolled, was the Volunteers'  Workshop and most of us could hardly wait. By the time the Workshop became a reality, we had already finished our first week of assignments and had started interacting briefly with each other on WhatsApp Task Forums and Facebook.  A Standard SA Observation Sheet on Coins A few days before the workshop,  the we started receiving picture messages on WhatsApp, showing us the coins we would be studying and asking us to bring along any old ones we might have at home,  for the purpose of study.  Those of us who were bringing coins were also asked to make a preliminary observation sheet such as this one, right here.  Soon, a message was circulated on the Volunteer Workshop Kit, which was basically a list of odd items we were supposed to carry with us to the workshop.  Finally, after a last minute venue change, the day for the first S...

In our last post, you read how an idiosyncratic Panel of five archaeologists started posting their findings on the Facebook page Speaking Archaeologically,  drawing interested people and parties from all over the world. Today's post is about what happened next! Within two months of its inception,  the Panelists began to receive  invites and emails from several amateurs and professionals to visit new towns and cities, with lost archaeological stories and historical anecdotes, so that, they could include them on the Global Archaeological Map.  Travelling to all these sites was, however,  impossible for the Panel. Long journeys, international flights and brain wracking archaeological work is not easily done, especially when one has to rely on personal finances for the work, after all! This gave birth to Phase II of Speaking Archaeologically: something the Panelists christened   Citizen  Archaeology .  Drawing inspiration from th...

The post that changed it all! Speaking Archaeologically is "[A]n archaeologist's attempt to start a platform for all freelance archaeologists and volunteers to further the cause of archaeology worldwide!" Well easier said than done. An idea is all that is needed to seed great works. One such idea came to be known as Speaking Archaeologically. It all started with the picture of a palace which grew into an organisation. On a fateful day in the early months of 2015, a young girl is struck by two pictures of a palace in Himachal Pradesh (a province in the northern India) which had been in shadows for a long time. Upon her mother's suggestion, these pictures were posted on social media Facebook. However, what happened next was unanticipated. The pictures not only received an overwhelming response from people all over the globe but there were also requests flooding in with people sharing their pictures of lost/unacknowledged heritages. As it was to be,...