Kar sevaks (Hindu volunteers) demolished the Babri Masjid, a medival mosque in the northern Indian city of Ayodhya on 6 December, 1992, resulting in the loss of human life in Ayodhya and elsewhere in India / Image credit: sabrang, 2016
Kar sevaks (Hindu volunteers) demolished the Babri Masjid, a medival mosque in the northern Indian city of Ayodhya on 6 December, 1992, resulting in the loss of human life in Ayodhya and elsewhere in India / Image credit: sabrang, 2016
Few scholars today would argue that archaeology is practised in a social and political vacuum, or insist that the history of archaeology offers little more than a “nostalgic retreat” as David Clarke (1968: xiii) once remarked. But this does not mean that archaeologists are in agreement regarding the relationship between the history of archaeology and the practice of archaeology. These fault lines are especially evident when we consider national styles of archaeology and the colonial history of the discipline.