Abstract

In this paper I seek to understand antiquarian practices in a colonial context in the Indian sub-continent with reference to J.H. Rivett-Carnac who was a member of the Bengal Civil Service. Covering varied subjects like ‘ancient cup marks on rocks,’ spindle whorls, votive seals or a solitary Buddha figure, Rivett-Carnac’s writings reflect an imagining of a native landscape with wide-ranging connections in myths, symbolisms and material cultures which cross-cut geographical borders. I show how an epistemology of comparative archaeology was formed through the ways in which he compared evidence recorded from different parts of India to those documented in Great Britain and northern Europe. This was held together by ideas of tribal/racial migrations. I am arguing that a distinctive form of antiquarianism was unfolding in an ambiguous, interstitial space which deconstructs any neat binaries between the colonizer and the colonized. Recent researches have argued for many antiquarianisms which this paper upholds. With his obsession of cup marks Rivett-Carnac built a new set of interconnections in late 19th century Britain where the Antiquity of man was the pivot around which debates and theories circulated. In the colony, we see some of his predecessors concerned with the megalithic tombs scattered in different parts of central and southern India. Rivett-Carnac’s methodology was less rigorous and ‘scientific’ as compared to his peers or predecessors. His obsession with cup marks followed him—as he states in his autobiography—throughout his life.

Highlights

  • History of Archaeology in the Indian sub-continent is a field that shows only limited attempts at historical research of the discipline, as compared to the b­ urgeoning research in field archaeology

  • Letters and memoirs we discover a web of relations between individuals who displayed an obsessive interest in cup marks on stones and rocks and barrows

  • We find lengthy correspondence between Rivett-Carnac and some of his peers in England and Scotland who offered many meanings for the cup marks, drawing on connections between the ones traced in these countries and those found in the sub-continent

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Summary

Bulletin oftheHistoryof Archaeology

Bulletin of the History of Archaeology, 30(1): 1, pp. Locating an Antiquarian Initiative in a Late 19th Century Colonial Landscape: Rivett-Carnac and the Cultural Imagining of the Indian Sub-Continent

Bishnupriya Basak
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