Speaking Archaeologically™

Quick Question: Exactly when does an idea become so big that it is worth fighting for? Quicker Answer :  When it literally springs to life before you the minute you hold it in your hands. This journal, that we have spent nearly two months talking incessantly about like a pirate's parrot that has accidentally gotten high on rum, first came to life in my hands in the small canteen below the Victorian mansion in Shimla that is now the Himachal State Museum. This was an Object Analysis session where each member had a personalised hand-out and a worksheet, and typical of all Speaking Archaeologically Events back then, it would have been the task deadline for the Season 3 Members that night, in which, each student would be submitting a paper on one of the many aspects of Bhima Devi Temple.  Interestingly, by now, everyone had already submitted a paper or quit on the pretext of "too soon," "too many assignments in the college," "too much on my plate a...

Context is imperative to all archaeological studies. This is the line you'll encounter when you first start reading our journal on the Bhima Devi Project if you skip the Preface, that is.  So, what better line to begin this memoir with than this? It's doing precisely that for you right now—establishing context.  So, let's go then you and I... Let's not waste time. Let's go back in time! June 3, 2015 My first encounter with the site Bhima Devi Temple happened literally two days after Speaking Archaeologically was born. Back then, it was never going to be a Research platform. It wasn't even going to be a teaching platform. It was only going to be a page about forgotten sites and monuments on Facebook that people encountered by chance—and that's what I was doing that morning—writing about the Mughal Gardens of Pinjore (now known as the Yadavindra Gardens) when I stumbled upon what Wikipedia claimed to be The Khajuraho of the North.  Intrigued, I let one webpage...

"Imagine standing in a room in a large museum. As you look around the dimly lit gallery, you begin to recognize shapes: a basket, an arrow, a beautifully decorated carving, a shield. Some of the objects are unrecognizable to you. What if these objects could speak? What would they tell you about themselves? How have they been used? Where did they come from? How did they get to this museum? Who do they belong to?"                                                                                                                    - Ari Berk and Carolyn Dunn It was a typical cozy, warm Sunday morning, with the air resplendent with festive vibes, perfect for catching up on all that lost sleep. Yet I ...

So far you have read posts on Site visits, Site covers, Restoration Projects, Interesting Workshops, Stone Tools, History, Sculptures and what not. So tell me, what not? What's the one thing that SA hasn't associated itself with, yet? What else have you not read about here? We've covered architecture, artifacts and paintings but what's new this time? Till date, Speaking Archaeologically has been providing you with the artworks of the old masters but this time it is the artistic insight of the young minds. On a Sunshiny Sunday Morning of March 24th, SA organized an Illustration competition under the name of " Skhédíos 2019 " and just a few days before that, I thought that I must also participate because how difficult could it be? I've drawn site plans before and I've enjoyed it. But believe me, putting those aesthetic sculptures down on paper is just as difficult as sculpting one, if not more. All the 11 young artists and me, were asked to choose t...

I feel elated at the opportunity to write about a monument, that I first time saw some fifteen years ago, while traveling by road to Shikarpur city from my village. Conspicuous from the roadside the site is in Lakhi town. I still remember, it was a standing structure of red bricks, built on a high artificial mound and at first glance, I felt as if I was experiencing the past from my window. I hadn’t even had the chance to collect my thoughts before the van conductor yelled, ‘Lakhi Lakhi . . . Halli acho Lakhi wara …,’ and the van stopped. Intrigued and confused by the expression of fascination on my face, the passenger next to me asked me what I was looking at. Perplexed I replied, “Hnmm…chaa” (which means “what?” in Sindhi ). He said plainly, this is ‘ Lakhi Munaro ’ and then there was silence . . . The monument or the site is known by various names such as, ‘Lakhi Munaro,’‘Lakhi Minar’ and ‘ Lakhi Thul’ (this...

Have you ever looked at an ancient monument or sculpture Trishla is a research wing member at Speaking Archaeologically since August 2018 and wondered : how it is, that our ancient civilisations, armed with just a set of primitive tools, were able to conceptualise and execute them ? I know I have . But everytime a teacher responded with "That's for you to find out" and multiple google searches led me to the famous "Maybe the God's built it..?" or my mothers favourite, "Alien theory," I put aside my rather genuine inquiry only to forget about it completely-until it hit me again on site at Sanghol. If you haven't read my last blog here, where I took about how we reached the site, its history and present status, it would be a good idea to read that first for what we call "more context". In this blog I'll only be dishing on how we resourcefully tackled our biggest handicap at the Sanghol site which as I had mentioned in that...

If you're looking for a perfect holiday destination or somewhere you would drive to hangout and grab some beers with your friends,Sanghol might not qualify to feature in your list. But if your archaeology seeds are yearning to sprout, Sanghol is water to you. Archaeology does something to you. It makes you excited about an ordinary place, excited enough to write a blog about it. Sanghol, a small village in the Fatehgarh Sahib, district, around 40 kilometres from Chandigarh on the Chandigarh-Ludhiana highway is an archaeological haven. The village, in a series of excavations in 1968 and 1985 had yielded many sculptures, stone slabs and pillars dating back to the Kushans ( now housed at the Sanghol site museum), and also played host for the First Planning Workshop and Site Visit of Speaking Archaeologically’s New Batch. On the dawn of August 19, 2018 we set out, on what we as Batch 2018, assumed would be one great adventure trip. Something à la Indiana Jones, an idea tha...