Pottery Making Cultures And Indian Civilization

This Is An Unusual Exploration Into India S Timeless Civilization By An Enthropologist Who Has Devoted Six Years To Extensive Survey Of The Peasant Potters Of More Than Half Of India. The Author Of This Book , Writes Professor N.K. Bose , Has Applied Some Methods In The Study Of Indian Culture Which&. Have Not Been Used By Any Other Student Of Cultural Anthropology In This Country. His Method Of Correlation Of Material Culture With The Total Cultural System Marks A Departure From The Conventional Studies Of Cultural Processes. He Has Suggested New Methods Of Reconstructing History, And His Data On Contemporary Pottery Making Afford A Reassessment Of Indian Archaeological Materials.The Author S Extensive Experience With Inter-Disciplinary Inquiry Yields Insight. From A Detailed Analysis Of The Ethnographic Data On Pottery Making, He Makes Some Significant Observations: There Is Continuity In Potter-Craft Tradition In India, Traceable From The Pre-Historic Times. The Survival Of The Ethnic Groups Of Potters, Well Within Their Respective Technological Zones Of Pre-Historic Pottery Making, Makes The Aryanization Of India Doubtful. Different Regions Of India Have Evolved Their Own Indigenous Cultures Providing Extreme Diversity To The Material Base Of Indian Society-Their Unity Lies In The Basic Philosophy Of Life, In The Higher Forms Of Culture. To An Average Indian, The Diversity Of Cultures-Food, Dress, Language, Worship-Does Not Really Matter, So Long As He Believes That Every Way Of Life Has Its Own Contribution To Humanity, And That Before The Inexorable Law Of Nature, Every Being Has An Equal Right To Survive Through The Full Course Of Its Cosmic Life. This Idealization Of Diversity Has Helped India Develop A Tradition Of Tolerance, Which Is The Soul Of Her Civilization.Apart From Its Contribution To Anthropology, The Book Will Be Of Particular Interest To Historians Of Culture And Philosophers Of Social History

Book deals with the anthroplogy and culture of ancient India and the surviving archaeological evidence.

A Sourcebook of Indian Civilization aims at familiarising its readers with the various aspects that go into the making of the history of Indian civilisation. The arrangement of the material in the chapters and selections conform to a rationally conceived and planned scheme of history. The contents of the book presents an extensive view of Indian life and thought.

The aim of Artefacts as Categories is to ask what we can learn about a society from the variability of the objects it produces. Dr Miller presents a comprehensive analysis of the pottery produced in a single village in central India, drawing together and analysing a whole range of aspects - technology, function, design, symbolism and ideology - that are usually studied separately. Using the concepts of 'pragmatics', 'framing' and 'ideology', the author points to the insufficiency of many ethnographic accounts of symbolism and underlines the need to consider both the social positioning of the interpreter and the context of the interpretation when looking at artefacts. His invigorating study cogently questions many assumptions in material culture studies and offers a whole range of fresh explanations. Archaeologists in particular will welcome the discussion of familiar materials such as pottery rim shapes, body forms and decoration. However, the book will have a broad appeal to researchers in cultural studies, social anthropology and psychology and will attract all those interested in the problem of relating objects and society.

The articles in this survey of the Indo-Aryan controversy address questions such as: are the Indo-Aryans insiders or outsiders?

This works proposes that a women's tradition in ceramics is one in which pottery making is a gendered activity intimately connected with female identity. The knowledge is passed down from one generation to the next. It guides the reader through these traditions continent by continent. Different areas are illustrated with beautiful, detailed maps and fascinating colour photographs from around the world.