Peter Johansen, PhD

Assistant Professor, 

Department of Anthropology

McGill University

The archaeology of southern India, like many regions of the world, has developed through multiple intersections of colonial historiography and archaeological epistemology. Its approach to chronology and culture, steeped in evolutionist and culture-historical paradigms, has reified a restricted number of lengthy and perduring periods with corresponding essentialized societal, cultural and political forms. A re-evaluation of second millennium BCE South Deccan mortuary practices, and their associated ceramic assemblages trouble the epistemological foundations of South India’s ware-based relative chronology and point to theoretical and methodological problems with the use of ‘archaeological cultures’ and their material proxies as analytical units that seek to understand cultural practices and deep history. This talk will discuss the developing role of ceramic serving vessels in localized South Indian funerary rituals. It argues that mortuary assemblages, including materials like slipped and polished ware serving vessels, developed across the South Deccan during the second millennium BCE through citational fields spurred on by the performative politics of mortuary ritual and the communities of practice that formed to pursue mortuary projects and address the recurrent problem of death.