Archaeology

"Archaeology is archaeology is archaeology"

"An archaeologist is the best husband any woman can have; the older she gets, the more interested he is in her."

"In archaeology, the story of the past is largely told through the experiences of men. There have been noticeably fewer explorations of the wider spectrum of gendered identities and ideologies that undoubtedly existed during the human past. This is perhaps not surprising given that many inequalities based on sex, sexual preference or sexual identity persist to the present day. Our versions of the past reflect the context in which archaeological knowledge is produced: a patriarchal society in which (white) men are privileged above others tends to write a past based on the supremacy of males in highly stratified cultures, mirroring their present."

"Archaeology as a field of study isn't just about the past, it's about the present and future too. The discipline has transformative qualities. It can be used as a powerful tool to help connect communities, and can give people a real sense of place and the landscape that surrounds them."

"Being an archaeologist isn’t a profession; it’s a way of being, thinking and behaving."

"It may be taken as a sign of the increasing theoretical maturity of the discipline of archaeology that it is beginning to see itself as a product of the forces of history. . . . there has been a shift from an internal understanding of archaeology as an objective and value-free practice towards a broader understanding that situates archaeology in its social and political context."

"Linguist too frequently and too adroitly, assign languages to archaeological cultures, while archaeologists are often too quick to assign their sherds a language."

"Material culture is no more objective, apolitical, unbiased, or able to speak for itself than documents, although it has at times been treated that way."

"History is too serious to be left to historians."

"Unfortunately some archaeologists seem to have no eyes to see anything but what the spade digs up from the bowels of the earth, and no ears to hear anything that is not echoed from excavated ruins."

"In a different kind of instrumentalization, archaeology has itself been deployed as a weapon of war and structural violence, sometimes by archaeologists but often by others seeking to use it for their own aims. Targeting of archaeological sites and monuments for destruction in the context of violent conflicts, or “eliminationism” (Gonzalez-Ruibal & Hall 2015, pp. 156–57), is well attested from antiquity up to the present (Kohl 1998, Bevan 2006,Weizman 2007). Archaeological evidence has been used to justify the dispossession of people from their lands and homes, as in ongoing conflicts over the Silwan area of Jerusalem. In Silwan, excavations have revealed occupation since the Bronze Age, but the public presentation of the site by the private Israeli organization El-Ad highlights exclusively the portions of the past purportedly linked to the biblical David and other elements of Jewish history. This connection has been used to claim the area for Jewish settlement. Palestinian houses have been confiscated, and excavations have been conducted in the immediate vicinity and even underneath these properties (Abu el-Haj 2001, pp. 228–34, 258–62; Greenberg 2009; Pullan & Gwiazda 2009; de Cesari & Herzfeld 2015, pp. 181–83)."

"Without archaeology we can have no proper understanding of who we are or of the places we inhabit. Every street, every field, every moor or coastline, has a human story untold by written history. Archaeology gives us the eyes to see that saga. That beauty."

"Archaeology helps us understand history in a different way, and is the only way that we can make sense of what happened in these islands in prehistory."

"I find it impossible to attribute with any degree of certainty any given language to any given prehistoric civilization."

"Unesco conventions on antiquities have been in place since 1970. In February this year, the UN Security Council banned trade in artefacts illegally removed from Syria since 2011 and Iraq since 1990, hoping to choke off a funding source for terrorist groups. But enforcement is near impossible in both these countries amid the current turmoil. And in the destination countries, it’s up to law enforcers to establish when those objects left conflict zones. “The lack of evidence either way means that the dealer wins,” says Patty Gerstenblith, a lawyer specialising in cultural heritage at Chicago’s DePaul University College of Law. This high bar means that authorities often settle for reclaiming objects rather than pursuing cases through criminal courts – so some dealers might assess that, given the overall profits, it’s worth losing the odd artefact to the process. While we can’t second-guess the context or motives, Gerstenblith cites examples of Egyptian artefacts seized by US officials in Miami, Iraqi items in New York and Cambodian objects in Los Angeles; in each case, there were no attempts at prosecution. She suggests that less-scrupulous dealers may engage in wilful ignorance over an object’s provenance when a seller approaches them with a story. “They don’t ask a lot of questions, they think, ‘Oh fine, I have your word for it’ – and that’s sufficient to establish that the dealer didn’t know it was illegal.”"

"I have lived on these lands for years. My father, and the father of my father, pitched their tents here before me; but they never heard of these figures. For twelve hundred years have the true believers (and, praise be to God! all true wisdom is with them alone) been settled in this country, and none of them ever heard of a palace under ground. Neither did they who went before them. But lo! here comes a Frank from many days’ journey off, and he walks up to the very place, and he takes a stick [...] and makes a line here, and makes a line there. Here, says he, is the palace; there, says he, is the gate; and he shows us what has been all our lives beneath our feet, without our having known anything about it. Wonderful! wonderful! Is it by books, is it by magic, is it by your prophets, that you have learnt these things? Speak, O Bey; tell me the secret of wisdom."

"Archeologists have not discovered stages of human existence so early that they were without art. Right back in the early morning twilights of mankind we received it from Hands which we were too slow to discern. And we were too slow to ask: FOR WHAT PURPOSE have we been given this gift? What are we to do with it? And they were mistaken, and will always be mistaken, who prophesy that art will disintegrate, that it will outlive its forms and die. It is we who shall die — art will remain. And shall we comprehend, even on the day of our destruction, all its facets and all its possibilities?"

"The claim by archaeologists to be able to falsify interpretations on the basis of new evidence or by means of new techniques of analysis is dismissed by extreme relativists as an untenable manifestation of elitism and intellectual hegemony, which must be resisted with counterclaims that all interpretations of the past are subjective and hence there is no way to demonstrate that the insights of a professional archaeologist are necessarily superior to those of anyone else."

"Archaeology is destruction."

"Another observation that needs to be pointed out is that a number of scholars are prepared to consider that the Bactria Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC), which will be discussed in the next chapter, is an Indo-Aryan culture. The horse has been evidenced in this culture in the form of representations in grave goods. However, no horse bones have been found despite the availability of a large number of animal bones. This again underscores the point that lack of horse bones does not equal the absence of horse. Nor, at least in the opinion of those who subscribe to the Indo-Aryan identification of the BMAC, does this lack equal the absence of Indo-Aryans. Therefore, anyone prepared to associate the BMAC culture with the Indo-Aryans cannot then turn around and reject such an identification for the Indus Valley on the grounds of lack of horse bones in the latter."

"In contemporary Bactria, for instance, the horse is well documented through depictions in grave goods, yet no horse bones have been found. 'This again underscores the point that lack of horse bones does not equal the absence of horse', observes Edwin Bryant."

"But, crucially, it is proofs of a southward migration toward India and Iran that are lacking. At the start of the second millennium, a powerful and prosperous proto-urban civilization known as the “Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex” (BMAC; also known as the Oxus civilization) flourished in the southern oases of Central Asia. Excavations carried out over the past thirty years have revealed hundreds of sites, the most notable of which, if we ignore the older excavations at Namazga and Altyn Depe, are Gonur Depe (sometimes interpreted as a capital), Togolok, Kelleli, Taip, Djarkutan, Dashly Depe, and Sapalli Depe.51 This is a true urban civilization, with mud-brick fortifications, temples, and palaces, founded on a prosperous agricultural economy (which involved the use of irrigation) and control over networks of neighboring villages. The graves of the elite contain high-value bronze and copper objects. Indeed, the region is rich in precious mineral resources: gold, copper, lead, silver, tin, turquoise, and lapis-lazuli. Craftsmanship was highly developed, and most of the pottery is wheel-thrown. The existence of seals attests to the degree of economic complexity, as do long-distance exchanges of luxury goods. The BMAC is therefore truly part of this urban belt of semi-arid South West Asia—stretching from Mesopotamia, through Iran (with the Elam and Jiroft cultures) to the Indus civilization in the east—which prospered during the second half of the third millennium and the early second millennium BCE. The objects exchanged also attest to contacts between the inhabitants of these cities and members of the vast Andronovo steppic culture situated immediately to the north."

"...Just as the cultures of the steppes have various historical origins and not solely Pontic, similarly, the BMAC has predecessors which are archaeologically visible in the material culture, both within its home area and further west, when the Neolithic way of life was being established. It is therefore very difficult to assign it a steppic origin. Incidentally, this is confirmed by biological anthropology, with all its limitations, which shows the permanency of physical characteristics within the BMAC and the very limited extent of mixing with steppic populations.57"

"At least one thing is sure: the collapse of both these urban civilizations (i.e., those of the BMAC and the Indus) was not caused by attacks by Andronovan barbarians from the steppes. In fact, it was the result of the slow breakdown of centralized authoritarian power, which did not leave behind a wasteland but rather gave way to more modest, village-type settlements. There are no traces of Andronovan objects south of the BMAC, and the same is true in the Hindu Kush mountain passes that lead to India. As we have seen, there are no traces either in the Indus Valley. But since the current languages spoken in Northern India indeed belong to the Indo-European group, there is only one solution left to save the invasionist model, or at least the concept of an “arrival of the Indo-Iranians”: invisible migrations."

"...The currently irresolvable contradictions that mar the many attempts made to reconcile the linguistic and archaeological evidence (and indeed biological anthropological evidence) for the “arrival of the Aryans in India” do not mean that the supposed “original Indo-European People” emerged in India (this would pose the same problems, but in reverse), nor do they mean that “invisible migrations” did not exist in the past. It simply means that, in the current state of knowledge, none of the hypotheses forwarded can be seriously demonstrated. Given the stakes involved, extreme caution needs to be exercised when attempting to solve this issue."

"The problematic therefore becomes obvious: Which of the two peoples are the Indo-Iranians, the Andronovo people or the BMAC people, keeping in mind that their material cultures, as well as their economic systems, were radically different? Both answers have, of course, been proposed, each with acceptable arguments, and we will not even attempt to sum up the highly technical debates—ongoing and nowhere near resolution—between the proponents of the BMAC option52 (incidentally, this is where Adolphe Pictet located the original Cradle in 1859) and proponents of the steppic option.53 In reality, the archaeological arguments needed to certify the “Indo-Iranian-ness” of a given site are highly debatable.54 Reference is made to the existence of a “fire cult,” to the crushing of plants to obtain an inebriating drink (the soma of the Indians and the haoma of the Iranians—of which we know nothing), the exposure and defleshing of corpses, and, in contrast, their cremation, etc. However, these activities do not leave unequivocal and specific traces within the archaeological record. Cremation occurs no earlier on the steppes than in the BMAC area, and, in any case, it is not a particularly strong marker of ethnicity, regardless of the period in question.55 The iconography found on luxury goods associated with the BMAC does not share any themes with the ancient Indo-Iranian texts. We encounter a goddess, a bird of prey hero, a dragon, and an ibex-god, which evoke both a shared Eurasian background and clear influences from Elam; only a small number of silver vessels bear scenes that, according to Henri-Paul Francfort, might potentially find comparisons in Indo-Iranian mythologies.56"

"Of course we must remain open to new interpretations and new findings. In this field, confident assertions can be overruled the same day by new discoveries. But if Sergent himself, all while advocating an Indo-Aryan interpretation of the known Bactrian findings, is giving us so many hints that their identity is uncertain at best, and otherwise more likely Iranian than Indo-Aryan, we should have no reason to disbelieve him. On the strength of the data he offers, the safest bet is that the Bactrian Bronze Age culture was the centre of Iranian culture.... Not being an archaeologist, I do not want to evaluate the status quaestionis of the archaeological search for IE origins. All I can do is note that the archaeologists themselves don’t seem to have mapped out the trail of the early Indo-Europeans in South and Central Asia with a convincing amount of detail. Asko Parpola and Bernard Sergent have made a valiant attempt, and invasionists are hopeful that if pursued further, these efforts should lead to the definitive proof of the AIT. However, we have seen that the interpretation which Parpola and Sergent give to the crucial Bactrian Bronze Age culture as Indo-Aryan is uncertain, and that their own data could better support the identification of that culture as Iranian. More importantly, we have seen that they have not succeeded in getting the Bactrians into India, i.e. in proving an actual migration of people and of a culture into India."

"This great uncertainty, which may seem surprising, is due to the fact that no trace of an invasion is noted on the ground, that no cultural transformation is marked by the presence of archaeological material whose origin could be assigned to peripheral regions. Expressions like elite dominance or infiltration, despite their great evocative power, are only rhetorical devices. They do not succeed in masking our current incapacity to account for a supposed historical phenomenon... In neither of the two regions, steppe and oasis, do we find archaeological material which can be without discussion attributed to Indo-Iranians, or to Indo-Aryans, or to Iranians."

"In the two categories of hypotheses, the link between the Oxus Civilization and the Indo-Aryans is made... Unfortunately, this hypothesis is not tenable because this material, which ranges from a few tombs in Makran or Quetta (and very different) to sites like Mehrgarh VIII or Sibri, is disparate. Then, these relationships are for the most part predating 1800-1600 BCE and they could be of a diplomatic-commercial type or mark transfers of prestigious goods, without indicating the slightest migration... Finally, Baluchistan may as well be considered at this time as an eccentric southeastern part of Central Asia and the Iranian plateau (Quetta region), or as a part of the Indus Valley world... These finds therefore do not demonstrate the arrival of the Indo-Aryans in India."

"That speakers of, among others, Indo-European, Indo-Iranian, Indo-Aryan and Iranian languages participated in such movements towards the Oxus Civilization is entirely possible, but the archaeological record cannot demonstrate this."

"In short, the Iranians perhaps (if they did not penetrate into Iran through the Caucasus), the Proto-Indo-Aryans certainly crossed the territories of the Oxus civilization without having left any traces and, it seems, without having been influenced by this sedentary and proto-urban civilization."

"Any acceptance that all this was the handiwork of Indo-Aryans will entail abandoning certain stereotypes such as that the Indo-Aryans knew no urban centers or temples and that the failure of archaeologists to uncover horse bones equals the real-life absence of horses in a society. Hiebert and Lamberg-Karlovsky disagree with Sarianidi concerning the external origin (from southeastern Iran) of the BMAC, preferring to consider it "the development of a new type of social structure within an ongoing culture, rather than migration or invasion" (Hiebert 1995, 200). This position has been accepted by Tosi (1988), albeit in conjunction with a "massive immigration of external elements" (62). Hiebert and Lamberg-Karlovsky note that there is no site in southeastern Iran providing any evidence for such a claim, and that any BMAC material found on sites from that area is intrusive in nature. In other words, if there is a movement, it is from east to west. These scholars are prepared to consider, however, that the BMAC culture is Indo-Aryan. Of particular relevance is the intrusion of burial assemblages with artifacts typical of the BMAC culture into the Iranian plateau and the western borders of the Indus Valley in the sites of Mehrgarh VII and Sibri in Baluchistan, which "may be correlated with the introduction of the Indo-European language" (Hiebert and Lamberg-Karlovsky 1992, 1)."

"[A very recent study, not on crude skull types but on the far more precise genetic traits, confirms the absence of an immigration from Central Asia in the second millennium BC. Brian E. Hemphill and Alexander F. Christensen report on their study of the migration of genetic traits (with reference to AIT advocate Asko Parpola):] “Parpola’s suggestion of movement of Proto-Rg-Vedic Aryan speakers into the Indus Valley by 1800 BC is not supported by our data. Gene flow from Bactria occurs much later, and does not impact Indus Valley gene pools until the dawn of the Christian era.”"

"In search of another candidate, Narasimhan et al. (2019) sought out samples from the Oxus (or ‘BMAC’) civilisation, but again effectively drew a blank: no significant Steppe ancestry, but largely Iranian continuity instead. What the main BMAC culture site at Gonur Depe does host, however, already by 4250 BP, is a burial of a horse and wagon with bronze wheel rims, and perhaps even soma (or haoma) preparation — supposedly good markers of early Indo-Iranic, for example, but genetically not from the Steppe. Indeed while their ultimate origins would lie in the Caucasus/Zagros homeland, there is no strong case for excluding that the long evolution into the distinctly Iranic branch proceeded in or near what is now Iran, and the distinctly Indic branch on the Indus, spreading then also along the Ganges."

"There is absolutely no doubt, as amply documented by Pierre Amiet (1984), of the existence of BMAC material remains recovered from Susa, Shahdad, and Tepe Yahya. There is, however, every reason to doubt that because these parallels exist that the BMAC originates in south- eastern Iran. This is extremely unlikely for the BMAC materials are intrusive in each of the sites on the Iranian Plateau as they are also on sites of the Arabian Peninsula (Potts 1994)."

"There is scant evidence to support the notion of an extensive migration from Syro-Anatolia to Bactria-Margiana at any point in the archaeological record. Architectural similarities are exceedingly generalized and where parallels are drawn they pay little attention to time/space systematics... One gets the impression that Sarianidi chose the Syro-Anatolian region as the homeland of the BMAC in order to situate it within the geographical region in which the first Indo-Aryan texts, discussed earlier, were recovered. This presumably strengthens his Indo-Aryan claim for the BMAC (1999). His book Myths is devoted to convincing the reader that the BMAC seals derive their thematic inspiration and style from the Syro-Anatolian region."

"The wide scatter of a limited number of BMAC artifacts does not privilege any area as a “homeland” for the BMAC. An extremely limited number of parallels between the BMAC and Syro-Anatolia signify the unsurprising fact that, at the end of the third and begin- ning of the early second millennium, interregional contacts in the Near East brought people from the Indus to Mesopotamia and from Egypt to the Aegean into contact."

"A distant BMAC “homeland,” followed by an expansive migration to Central Asia, is difficult, if not impossible, to maintain. Nevertheless, the origins of the BMAC remains a fundamental issue. Although some scholars advance the notion that the BMAC has indigenous roots, the fact remains that the material culture of the BMAC is not easily derived from the preceding Namazga IV culture, thus suggesting its intrusive nature. The wide scatter of BMAC materials from south- eastern Iran to Baluchistan and Afghanistan suggests that the beginnings of the BMAC could lie in this direction, an area of enormous size and an archaeological terra nullius. In fact, the BMAC of Central Asia may turn out to be its most northern extension while its heartland might be found in the vast areas of unexplored Baluchistan and Afghanistan."

"The BMAC and the Andronovo are contemporary but their archaeological cultures and environmental settings are vastly different. Passages from the Avesta and the Rigveda are quoted by dif- ferent authors to support the Indo-Iranian identity of both the BMAC and the Andronovo. The passages are sufficiently general as to permit the Plains Indians of North America an Indo-Iranian identity! Furthermore, archaeology offers vir- tually no evidence for BMAC influence on the steppe and only scant evidence for an Andronovo presence within the settlement of the BMAC. There is little archaeological evidence within the settlements to support the notion that the Andronovo and the BMAC experienced a significant and/or sustained contact. Yet, settlement surveys indicate that the distinctive communities were close neighbors, exploit- ing the same environment. There is certainly no evidence to support the notion that the BMAC and the Andronovo shared a common ancestor. To date the horse has not been identified in the BMAC and the very diagnostic metal inventories that characterize both cultures are entirely absent in the other. There is simply no compelling archaeological evidence to support, or for that matter to deny, the notion that either one, both, or neither are Indo-Iranians."

"One conclusion can be readily stated: there is not a single artifact of Andronovo type that has been identified in Iran or in northern India. The same cannot be said of the BMAC. There is ample evidence for the presence of BMAC materials on the Iranian Plateau and Baluchistan: Susa, Shahdad, Yahya, Khurab, Sibri, Miri Qalat, Deh Morasi Ghundai, Nousharo, etc. It is impossible, however, to trace the continuity of the BMAC material culture into the first millennium and relate it to the known cultures of Iranian speakers – the Medes or the Achaemenids (or their presumed Iron Age ancestors, see Young 1967; Ghirshman 1977). Within the entirety of the second millennium the only intrusive archaeological culture that directly influences Iran and northern India is the BMAC. However, it remains impossible to link the BMAC with the development of later second and first millennium archaeological cultures on the Iranian Plateau."

"Mallory (1998) feels comfortable enough ascribing some form of Indo-Iranian identity to the Andronovo culture but admits that, "on the other hand, we find it extraordinarily difficult to make a case for expansions from this northern region to northern India . . . where we would presume Indo-Aryans had settled by the mid-second millennium BCE" (191). Referring to the attempts at connecting the Indo-Aryans to such sites as the Bishkent and Vakhsh cultures, he remarks that "this type of explanation only gets the Indo-Iranian to Central Asia, but not as far as the seats of the Medes, Persians or Indo-Aryans" (192). He points out that suggesting an Indo-Aryan identity for the BMAC requires a presumption that this culture was dominated by steppe tribes. However, "while there is no doubt that there was a steppe presence on BMAC sites, . . . this is very far from demonstrating the adoption of an Indo-Iranian language by the Central Asia urban population" (192)."

"Several kinds of evidence for the PIE locus have been presented here. Ancient loanwords point to a locus along the desert trajectory, not particularly close to Mesopotamia and probably far out in the eastern hinterlands. The structure of the family tree, the accumulation of genetic diversity at the western periphery of the range, the location of Tocharian and its implications for early dialect geography, the early attestation of Anatolian in Asia Minor, and the geography of the centum-satem split all point in the same direction: a locus in western central Asia. Evidence presented in Volume II supports the same conclusion: the long-standing westward trajectories of languages point to an eastward locus, and the spread of IE along all three trajectories points to a locus well to the east of the Caspian Sea. The satem shift also spread from a locus to the south-east of the Caspian, with satem languages showing up as later entrants along all three trajectory terminals. (The satem shift is a post-PIE but very early IE development.) The locus of the IE spread was therefore somewhere in the vicinity of ancient Bactria-Sogdiana. This locus resembles those of the three known post-IE spreads: those of Indo-Iranian (from a locus close to that of PIE), Turkic (from a locus near north-western Mongolia), and Mongolian (from north-eastern Mongolia)... Thus in regard to its locus, as in other respects, the PIE spread was no singularity but was absolutely ordinary for its geography and its time-frame. ... The reason that dialect divisions arising in the locus show up along more than one trajectory is that the Caspian Sea divides westward spreads into steppe versus desert trajectories quite close to the locus and hence quite early in the spread. In contrast, developments that occurred farther west, as the split of Slavic from Baltic in the middle Volga may have, continue to spread along only one trajectory. This is why the Pontic steppe is an unlikely locus for the PIE spread. ...Thus the structure of the IE family tree, the distribution of IE genetic diversity over the map, and what can be inferred of the geographical distribution of dialectal diversity in early IE all point to a locus in western central Asia"

"Approximately every two millennia, then, there has occurred a spread of a language family from a locus in the eastern part of the central Eurasian spread zone to cover the steppe and central Asia, extending partially or intermittently to the Danube plain, Anatolia, and northern Mesopotamia. The loci of the historically attested spreads are near the edge of the spread zone rather than in the centre of it: the piedmont to the south (Bactria-Sogdiana) for Iranian, the north of Mongolia for Turkic and Mongolian. The trajectories of language spread run east to west along the steppe and through the desert to the Near East as shown .... To take clear and historically well-attested examples, the locus, trajectories, and range of IE must have been much like those of Iranian or Turkic. ... The placement of the locus specifically in the vicinity of Bactria-Sogdiana is justified in .... A homeland reconstructed as locus, trajectory and range removes the dilemma: a locus in the vicinity of Bactria-Sogdiana implies a spread beginning at the frontier of ancient Near Eastern civilization and a range throughout the steppe and central Asia, following the east-to-west trajectory, with occasional or periodic spreads into the Danube plain and Anatolia."

"Sergent notes a peculiarity of the Bronze Age Bactrian culture: “in contrast with all the neighbouring cultures, the settlements of this culture are characterized by a very feeble accumulation: they were constructed in haste, apparently on the basis of a pre-established plan, and have not been occupied for very long”. That such makeshift settlements have produced such “brilliant” culture, indicates to me that they already had a brilliant cultural heritage to start with. And isn’t precisely the Harappan culture known for its proficiency in urban planning?"

"[the Harappan-Bactrian similarities are due to] “influence of northwestern India on Bactria by means of a migration of Indus people to Central Asia after the end of their civilization”."

"Which components of the reconstructed Indo-European proto-culture can be used as evidence of a steppic location?... two arguments are generally singled out by the proponents of the steppic theory: the case of the horse and that of the chariot. The domesticated horse, on the one hand, and the chariot on the other, are supposedly well-attested in the shared vocabulary and are particularly valorized in the earliest Indo-European mythologies, where the sacrifice of a horse is the ultimate royal sacrifice... The most common root for the horse is certainly found in a significant number of Indo-European languages... Its absence in Slavic is all the more surprising since the historical “cradle” of the Slavs is often said to be located in the North Pontic Steppes, or close by, precisely where the earliest domestication of the horse is reputed to have occurred."

"“Gimbutas, following most recent Russian work, has departed from Childe, to the extent of deriving the Kurgan cultures from the steppes on the Lower Volga and farther east (…) While linguistic opinion has been moving in the direction of putting the Indo-European homeland in the region of the Vistula, Oder or Elbe, archaeological opinion is now putting it in the Lower Volga steppe and regions east of the Caspian Sea.”"

"“Local evolution cannot account for such abrupt changes (…) The pottery is relatable to the earliest Neolithic in the Middle Urals and Soviet Central Asia.”"

"Russian scholar N. Merpert traces the Kurgan culture to the “Volga-Ural region, developing there under the influence of Neolithic cultures of the south-east Caspian zone”."

"The willingness... to see even 10% ancestry as if a good case for a language spread is reminiscent of their interpretations in the cases of Mycenaean Greek and South Asia. In both cases their own ancient DNA analyses support no “massive” migration of people of Steppe origin. On the contrary, overall percentages are generally very low, and in South Asia also too late for a plausible first arrival of Indic languages here (let alone Indo-Iranic as a whole). But however small and late, and however implausible that they replaced all languages from Iran right across to northern India, that is what has to be claimed for these weak signals, for the Steppe hypothesis to be right. ...the cat is out of the bag: not all Indo-European goes back to the Steppe. Now freed from the Steppe hypothesis as the base presumption (or aspiration) for interpreting aDNA data, we can look forward to a neutral re-evaluation of the most plausible candidates for tracing multiple other branches of the Indo-European family out of the original Caucasus/Zagros homeland, without all having to travel via the Steppe."

"There is nothing in Iran in the second millennium that is related to Andronovo, something which one would expect if the cradle of the Indo-Iranians were to be found in this territory."

"The most serious, obvious, and oft-cited objection against the northern Andronovo course is that the steppe culture does not intrude into the South Asian borderlands (not to speak of the heartland). Why, then, should one accept it as representing Indo-Aryan speakers intruding into South Asia?"

"There are no traces of Andronovan objects south of the BMAC, and the same is true in the Hindu Kush mountain passes that lead to India. As we have seen, there are no traces either in the Indus Valley. But since the current languages spoken in Northern India indeed belong to the Indo-European group, there is only one solution left to save the invasionist model, or at least the concept of an “arrival of the Indo-Iranians”: invisible migrations."

"Nothing allows us to dismiss the possibility that the Andronovians of Tazabagjab are the Indo-Iranians as much as the fact that they vanish on the fringes of sedentary Central Asia and do not appear as the ephemeral invaders of India at the feet of the Hindu Kush."

"In the same way that the Oxus Civilization disappears upon contact with India, the culture of the Andronovo steppes vanishes upon contact with the Oxus Civilization and never crosses towards the south the line which extends from Kopet Dagh to Pamir-Karakorum, which poses serious problems for historically translating the Indo-Aryans towards the South."

"We will notice that the traces attested today stop in Bactria... No Andronovian burial has yet been found south of the Oxus.... It should therefore be assumed that the Indo-Iranians, Proto-Iranians or Proto-Indo-Aryans got rid of this culture just as they entered Iran and India. The hypothesis is possible since, to arrive in these territories, they had necessarily crossed sedentary zones belonging to the Oxus civilization, whose material culture was much superior. The curious thing is that they seem not to have borrowed anything from the latter either... Clearly, it is very difficult to find a marker for the Indo-Iranian group."

"The hypothesis proposing a steppe origin for the Indo-Iranians is... internally contradictory. Its prolonged acceptance may be explained by the absence of critical scrutiny, much like the scenario realized by the child in Andersen’s fairy tale about the Naked King. Notably, all Russian archaeologists are well aware that Andronovo materials are absent in the south, yet most remain convinced of this southward migration. Some Western researchers have repeatedly criticised the steppe migration hypothesis, particularly the Kulturkugel model, and have noted the absence of Andronovo sites in the south. These findings are not obscure."

"The notion of nomads from the north as the original Iranians is unsupported by the detailed archaeological sequence available."

"It is this evidence concerning the western contribution which persuaded workers to advocate the view that the Andronovo culture area was the original home of the Indo-Iranians, from where they marched into Iran and India as two separate groups by the end of the 2nd millennium B.C. or the beginning of the 1st millennium B.C.. The Andronovo hypothesis was nevertheless faced with a serious shortcoming from the very beginning. The cultures of the Timber-frame Andronovo circle took shape in the 16th or 17th century B.C., whereas the Aryans already appeared in the Near-East not latter than the 15th to 16th century B.C.... These regions contain nothing reminiscent of Timber-frame Andronovo materials; in fact, the latter could not have been there at so early a date."

"To this day no traces of such stock breeders have been detected south of the Hindukush."

"Although there is a consensus among archaeologists working on the steppes that the Andronovo culture is in the right place at the right time, and thus is to be considered Indo-Iranian, there is neither textual, ethnohistoric, nor archaeological evidence, individually or in combination, that offers a clinching argument for this consensus. Kuzmina’s carefully constructed methodology simply cannot be applied to the Andronovo culture. The Andronovo culture is well over a thousand years distant from any textual tradition, making any linguistic and/or ethnohistoric attribution extremely tenuous."

"There is absolutely no archaeological evidence for any variant of the Andronovo culture either reaching or influencing the cultures of Iran or northern India in the second millennium. Not a single artifact of identifiable Andronovo type has been recovered from the Iranian Plateau, northern India, or Pakistan."

"With the recognition of Andronovo subcultures the identification of specific ones as Indo-Iranian has become an industry. Needless to say there is no consensus on the ethnicity of any single Andronovo subculture."

"Parallels between the material culture and the environment of the Andronovo are compared to commentaries in the Rigveda and Avesta and are taken to confirm the Indo-Iranian identity of the Andronovo. The parallels are far too general to offer confidence in these correlations."

"There is a tendency to treat the Andronovo as a single monolithic entity, ignoring the chronological and cultural variations."

"One conclusion can be readily stated: there is not a single artifact of Andronovo type that has been identified in Iran or in northern India."

"Passages from the Avesta and the Rigveda are quoted by different authors to support the Indo-Iranian identity of both the BMAC and the Andronovo. The passages are sufficiently general to permit the Plains Indians of North America an Indo-Iranian identity."

"Russian and Central Asian scholars working on the contemporary but very different Andronovo and Bactrian Margiana archaeological complexes of the 2d millennium b.c. have identified both as Indo-Iranian, and particular sites so identified are being used for nationalist purposes. There is, however, no compelling archaeological evidence that they had a common ancestor or that either is Indo-Iranian. Ethnicity and language are not easily linked with an archaeological signature, and the identity of the Indo-Iranians remains elusive."

"We find it extraordinarily difficult to make a case for expansions from this northern region to northern India . . . where we would presume Indo-Aryans had settled by the mid-second millennium BCE."

"In the history of Southern Siberia the Andronovo culture was of special importance. Its most southerly monuments are to be found in the foothills of the Altai; the most northerly ones are in the Ob region in the zones between the forest and the steppe."

"It should be indicated that the available direct archaeological data contradict the theory, suggested long ago, concerning the intensive penetration of the steppe Andronovo-type tribes into traditional agricultural areas. Direct archaeological data from Bactria and Margiana show without any shade of doubt that Andronovo tribes penetrated to a minimum extent into Bactria and Margianian oases, not exceeding the limits of normal contacts so natural for tribes with different economical structures, living in the borderlands of steppe and agricultural oases."

"Excavation at the disputed site of Rama Janmabhùmi-Babri Masjid was carried out by the Archaeological Survey of India from 12 March 2003 to 7 August 2003. During this period, as per the directions of the Hon’ble High Court, Lucknow 82 trenches were excavated to verify the anomalies mentioned in the report of the Ground Penetrating Radar Survey which was conducted at the site prior to taking up the excavations. A total number of 82 trenches along with some of their baulks were checked for anomalies and anomaly alignments. The anomalies were confirmed in the trenches in the form of pillar bases, structures, floors and foundation though no such remains were noticed in some of them at the stipulated depths and sports. Besides the 82 trenches, a few more making a total of 90 finally were also excavated keeping in view the objective fixed by the Hon’ble High Court to confirm the structures.”"

"Subsequently, during the early medieval period (eleventh-twelfth century A.D.) a huge structure, nearly 50 m in north-south orientation was constructed which seems to have been short-lived, as only four of the fifty pillar bass exposed during the excavation belong to this level with a brick crush floor. On the remains of the above structure was constructed a massive structure with at least three structural phases and three successive floors attached with it. The architectural members of the earlier short-lived massive structure with stencil cut foliage pattern and other decorative motifs were reused in the construction of the monumental structure having a huge pillared hall (or two halls) which is different from residential structure, providing sufficient evidence of a construction of public usage which remained under existence for a long time during the period VII (Medieval-Sultanate level-twelfth to sixteenth century A.D.). It was over the top of this construction during the early sixteenth century, the disputed structure was constructed directly resting over it. There is sufficient proof of existence of a massive and monumental structure having a minimum dimension of 50 × 30 m in north-south and east-west directions respectively just below the disputed structure. In course of present excavations nearly 50 pillar bases with brick bat foundation, below calcrete blocks topped by sandstone blocks were found. The pillar bases exposed during the present excavation wall of the earlier construction with which they are associated and which might have been originally around 60 m (of which the 50 m length is available at present). The centre of the central chamber of the disputed structure falls just over the central point of the length of the massive wall of the preceding period which could not be excavated due to presence of Ram Lala at the spot in the make-shift structure. This area is roughly 15×15 m on the raised platform. Towards east of this central point a circular depression with projection on the west, cut into the large sized brick pavement, signify the place where some important object was placed. Terracotta lamps from the various trenches and found in a group in the levels of Periods VII in trench G2 are associated with the structural phase."

"Subsequently, during the early medieval period (eleventh - twelfth century A. D.) a huge structure, nearly 50 m in north-south orientation was constructed... On the remains of the above structure was constructed a massive structure with at least three structural phases and three successive floors attached with it. The architectural members of the earlier short lived massive structure with stencil cut foliage pattern and other decorative motifs were reused in the Construction of the monumental structure having a huge pillared hall (or two halls) which is different from residential structures, providing sufficient evidence of a construction of public usage which remained under existence for a long time during the period VII (Medieval-Sultanate level - twelfth to sixteenth century A. D.) It was over the top of this construction during the early sixteenth century, the disputed structure was constructed directly resting over it.” The Hon'ble High Court, in order to get sufficient archaeological evidence on the issue involved „whether there was any temple/structure which was demolished and mosque was constructed on the disputed site‟.., had given directions to the Archaeological Survey of India to excavate at the disputed site where the GPR Survey has suggested evidence of anomalies which could be structure, pillars, foundation walls, slab flooring etc. which could be confirmed by excavation . Now, viewing in totality and taking into account the archaeological evidence of a massive structure just below the structure and evidence of continuity in structural phases from the tenth century onwards upto the construction of the disputed structure alongwith the yield of stone and decorated bricks as well as mutilated sculpture of divine couple and carved architectural' members including foliage patterns, âmalaka [a fruit motif], kâpotapâlî [a “dovecot” frieze or cornice] doorjamb with semi-circular pilaster, broken octagonal shaft of black schist pillar, lotus motif, circular shrine having pranâla (waterchute) in the north, fifty pillar bases in association of the huge structure, are indicative of remains which are distinctive features found associated with the temples of north India.”"

"‘Our excavations in Ayodhya in 1978 proved the existence of a temple dating to the 11th century. The ASI report just pushes it back by 50 or 100 years.’"

"“Among the structures listed in the report are several brick walls ‘in east-west orientation’, several ‘in north-south orientation’, ‘decorated coloured floor’, several ‘pillar bases’, and a ‘1.64-metre high decorated black stone pillar (broken) with yaksha [= demigod] figurines on four corners’.” ... “what many people have missed out on – due to bias or sloth – is that these are findings only from the period of May 22 to June 6. This is not the full list. If they read the earlier reports, they would also find listed several walls, a staircase, and two black basalt columns ‘bearing fine decorative carvings with two cross-legged figures in bas-relief on a bloomed lotus with a peacock whose feathers are raised upwards’.”"

"Archaeological findings in Prof. B.B. Lal’s excavation campaign Archaeology of the Ramayana Sites 1975-80 and more recent ones as well as a large number of documents written in tempore non suspecto confirm the hypothesis. Findings of burnt-brick pillar-bases dated to the 11th century in trenches a few metres from the disputed structure, prove that a pillared building stood in alignment with, and on the same foundations system as the Babri Masjid."

"There is ample archaeological evidence that the whole Ramkot hill was covered with a temple complex, as is only to be expected at the geographical place of honour in a temple city."

"In the 1970s, an ASI team led by Prof. B.B. Lal dug out some trenches just outside the mosque and found rows of pillar-bases which must have supported a larger building predating the mosque. Moreover, in the mosque itself, small black pillars with Hindu sculptures had been incorporated, a traditional practice in mosques built in forcible replacement of infidel temples to flaunt the victory of Islam over Paganism... In 1992, during excavations around the mosque in June and during the demolition on December 6, many more pieces of temple remains, mainly sculptures of Hindu gods and godlings, were discovered."

"Isn’t that funny: people wearing the mantle of the academic quest for knowledge who denounce the search for knowledge on the dogmatic plea that the outcome is known beforehand? ...Even back then, given all the earlier evidence, everything indicated that something would be discovered. They themselves cannot have been ignorant of this, so their opposition was a deliberate attempt to obstruct the progress of scientific knowledge."

"The party most likely to be elated over the non-finding of traces of a temple should have been the anti-temple lobby... yet it complains that the ASI team did find evidence, only it was of the pro-temple kind, hence “fabricated”. In the free-for-all of Indian secularism, we needn’t fuss over the fact that this grim allegation against the integrity of highly qualified scientists was levelled without any evidence."

"For fourteen years, the secularists had worked hard to keep the lid on the Ayodhya evidence and they didn’t want some puny radar scanner or muddy-handed archaeologist to bring the facts to light and thereby expose their mendaciousness."

"After all the wild claims made about their findings, the experts themselves have finally spoken... In a normal setting, the ASI findings should finish once and for all the campaign of history denial by the Marxists and their Muslim camp followers. But the world of Indian secularism is a fantasy-land where hard facts don’t count for much. So, a great many diehards unflinchingly reject the findings of science."

"But the dominant position certainly is to minimize the importance of the ASI findings. This is a general phenomenon in the whole secularist press: instead of a thorough analysis and a lively debate worthy of the importance and unequivocal verdict of the report, the page is turned as quickly as possible. This is, of course, a strong indication that the report’s findings are embarrassing for the secularists because they go against what the secularists have been saying for all these years. Like spoilt children, the secularists are used to having it all their own way, and when reality interferes, they close their eyes, shut off their ears and refuse to know. And they will lie and cheat in order to prevent others from knowing."

"All very well, but we should not forget that that point could have been reached fourteen or more years ago. What the recent excavations have merely confirmed was already well-known in 1989. The only problem was the mendacious denial of the historical facts by screaming and bullying secularists. Which, in turn, emboldened the Muslim hardliners into the most intransigent position in Court, in the political arena and on the streets. Think of the riots and the waste of energy that India could have been spared if the secularists had not obstructed the course of justice (or inter-communal negotiations, or a political settlement) with their denial of the historical reality underlying the Ayodhya dispute. I venture to put forth the view that these secularists have blood on their hands."

"The findings have uncovered the material remains of historical facts, and these facts were public knowledge for centuries, viz. that a Hindu temple had been forcibly replaced by a mosque. Before and after 1989, the Hindu nationalists have simply stood by this public knowledge, while the secularist lobby led the Muslims into disbelieving their own chronicles (which amply attested their pride in having performed the Islamic duty of iconoclasm at Ayodhya) and denying the facts."

"The team found that the objects were datable to the period ranging from the 10th through the 12th century AD, i.e., the period of the late Pratiharas and early Gahadvals. (...) These objects included a number of amakalas, i.e., the cogged-wheel type architectural element which crown the bhumi shikharas or spires of subsidiary shrines, as well as the top of the spire or the main shikhara ... This is a characteristic feature of all north Indian temples of the early medieval period (...) There was other evidence — of cornices, pillar capitals, mouldings, door jambs with floral patterns and others — leaving little doubt regarding the existence of a 10th-12th century temple complex at the site of Ayodhya.""

"There are also several types of cornices, pillar capitals, mouldings as well as door-jambs with meandering floral patterns. The images of chakrapurusha, Parashurama, matridevi, Shiva and Parvati, etc. provide further proof to their being members of a 10th-12th century Hindu temple-complex."

"It was then found that the history of the township was at least three thousand years old, if not more, and that at Ramajanmabhumi there stood a huge structure on a parallel series of square pillar-bases built of several courses of bricks and stones. When seen in the light of 20 black stone pillars, 16 of which were found re-used and standing in position as corner stones of piers for the disputed domed strucutre of the 'mosuqe', Prof. Lal felt that the pillar-bases may have belonged to a Hindu temple built on archaeological levels formed prior to the 13th century AD (...)"

"Several of the temple-pillars existing in the mosque and pillar- bases unearthed in the excavations conducted in the south of the mosque (although in the adjoining plot of land) show the same directional alignment. This will convince any student of architecture that two sets of material remains belong to one and the same complex. Secondly, the archaeological history of Islamic glazed ware in India goes back to the eleventh century, not the fifteenth ; in the fifteenth only a particular type of glazed ware was brought to India. Here at Ayodhya one kind of Islamic glazed ware was even a local imitation of the thirteenth century. Therefore, when we observe that here we recovered Islamic glazed ware of different periods, from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, from below the floor level of the mosque, we are telling the truth of archaeological discoveries."

"Mr. Sharma has not given a single piece of archaeological or historical evidence in support of what he says. The archaeological and other evidence from art history indicate that there was a Brahminical temple at the place where the mosque stands today. The iconographical features like vanamala and karandmukut show that it was probably a Vaishnava temple."

"The late archaeologist S.P. Gupta records how in July 1992 a team of archaeologists from ASI ―went to examine the 40 and odd art and architectural fragments of an ancient Hindu temple which had been found … in an ancient pit by the officials of the Government of Uttar Pradesh who were engaged in levelling the ground on the eastern and the southern flanks of the Rāmajanmabhūmi. … The team found that the objects were datable to the period ranging from 10th through the 12th century AD, i.e., … of the Late Pratiharas and Early Gahadvals. These objects included a number of āmalakas, i.e. the cogged-wheel type architectural element which crown the bhūmi shikharas or spires of subsidiary shrines, as well as the top of the spire of the main shikhara or pyramidal structure built over the garbha-griha or sanctum sanctorum, in which the image of the principal deity is kept and worshipped. ... [They] also included fragments of various types of jāla or mesh-like decorations which adorned the spire, … several types of cornices, pillar capitals, mouldings as well as door-jambs with meandering floral patterns. Images of chakrapurusha, Paraśurāma, Mātridevī, Shiva and Pārvatī … provide further proof to their being members of a 10th-12th century Hindu temple-complex."

"These kinds of art and archaeological evidences establish two things: — one, the antiquity of the site of Ayodhya goes back at least to 700 B.C. — Second, in the 11th century a large structure on pillars was erected at the site now popularly called 'Janmabhoomi'. At this very place, now a 16th century mosque stands. It has 14 black stone pillars, decorated with beautiful floral, faunal and human carving, largely mutilated. The carvings on them show that they were carved in the early 11th century. When compared with similar carvings on the pillars of structures of the 11th century elsewhere in U.P. we find that these are used in temples made of other stones, generally buffish sandstone. It is, thus, clear that the black stone pillars at Janmabhoomi also belonged to a temple. No secular structure in and around Uttar Pradesh used this stone for pillars. — Further, most of the pillars of the 11th century temples were removed at a later date, in the early 16th century, although a few of them are still in their original placement, others are displaced. Originally, there may have been 84 pillars and the area covered by them must have been around seven times more than that covered by the domed structure of the mosque."

"“In conclusion, the GPR survey reflects in general a variety of anomalies ranging from 0.5 to 5.5 metres in depth that could be associated with ancient and contemporaneous structures such as pillars, foundations walls, slab flooring, extending over a large portion of the site. However, the exact nature of those anomalies has to be confirmed by systematic ground truthing, such as provided by archaeological trenching.”"

"Plainly stated, the ASI Report conclusively established that Babri Masjid was not built on virgin land and that the remains found at the site were of religious structures... In other words, the excavations revealed that Babri Masjid was erected over, and with full knowledge of a pre-existing structure... parts of earlier temples and religious members of the last temple were used in the walls of the mosque."

"The brick-built pillar bases were only slightly larger than the bases of the fourteen black stone pillars existing in the Babri Masji... The black stone used for the pillars was a highly prized stone and was not used for fabricating pillars in any temple even in Ayodhya. Its use indicated the magnificence and importance of the structure... Fifty-six images of yakshas had been found at the base of fourteen pillars in the Babri Masjid."

"A month after the demolition... the authorities... discovered a 2.5 feet broad amalaka of the demolished temple.. The discovery of an inscription on 6th December 1992 should, in the normal course, have settled the Ayodhya controversy."

"In the Janmabhumni area. the uppermost levels of a trench that lay immediately to the south of the Babri Masjid brought to light a series of brick-built bases which evidently carried pillars thereon. In the construction of the Babri Masjid a few stone pillars had been used, which may have come from the preceding structure."

"There were stone pillars bearing Hindu motifs and sculptures... The beginning of the settlement at Ayodhya would appear to go back to the last quarter of the 2nd millennium BCE. ... In the uppermost levels... were encountered rows of pillar bases... the entire complex could be dated from the twelfth to fifteenth century CE. Attached to the piers of the Babari Masjid here were twelve stone pillars which carried not only typical Hindu motifs and mouldings but also figures of Hindu deities. It was self-evident that these pillars were not an integral part of the Masjid but were foreign to it. ... The first reaction that came up from a certain category of historians was to deny the very existence of these pillar-bases. Their approach was simple: if there were no pillar-bases, the question of their relationship with the pillars affixed to the piers of the Babari Masjid became automatically redundant. ... However ...[later] they gave up their first exercise in denial.... The demolition, though regrettable, brought to light a great deal of archaeological material from within the thick walls of the Masjid. From the published reports it is gathered that there were more than 200 specimens which included many sculptured panels and architectural components which must have once constituted parts of the demolished temple. ..."

"“The excavations so far give ample traces that there was a mammoth pre-existing structure beneath the three-domed Babri structure. (…) The bricks used in these perimeters predate the time of Babar. (…) More than 30 pillar bases have been found at equal spans. The pillar-bases are in two rows and the rows are parallel. The pillar-base rows are in North-South direction. A wall is superimposed upon another wall. At least three layers of the floor are visible. (…) These facts prove the enormity of the pre-existing structure. (…) Moulded bricks of round and other shapes and sizes were neither in vogue during the middle ages nor are in use today. It was in vogue only 2,000 years ago. Many ornate pieces of touchstone (kasauti stone) pillars have been found in the excavation. (…) The Gupta and the Kushan period bricks have been found. Brick walls of the Gahadwal period (12th Century CE) have been found in excavations.”... “definitely a structure with a religious purpose: “Beautiful stone pieces bearing carved Hindu ornamentations like lotus, kaustubh jewel, alligator facade, etc., have been used in these walls. (…) An octagonal holy fireplace (yajna kund) has been found. (…) Terracotta idols of divine figurines, serpent, elephant, horse-rider, saints, etc., have been found. Even to this day terracotta idols are used in worship during Diwali celebrations and then put by temple sanctums for invoking divine blessings. (…) The excavation gives out the picture of a vast compound housing a sole distinguished and greatly celebrated structure used for divine purposes.”"

"Lal or no Lal, the pillar bases built into the mosque walls are there for all to see."

"Mr. Mahadevan's comments were really an objective analysis of the archaeological data. I can reiterate this with greater authority, for I was the only Muslim who had participated in the Ayodhya excavation in 1976-77 under Professor Lal...I was at the Hanuman Garhi site, but I have visited the excavation near the Babri Masjid and seen the excavated pillar bases. The JNU historians have highlighted only one part of our findings while suppressing the other."

"The site was attacked by iconoclasts in the 11th century, once around 1030 CE and again around 1080 CE; the idols suffered and disappeared. No icons have been left in the site except a mutilated sculpture called Divine Couple."

"There is some structure under the mosque."

"[Professor K.V. Raman] noted that a "very impressive sculptural panel showing Dashavatars and a terracotta figurine of the Varaha incarnation of Vishnu had been unearthed from the site. It clearly indicated the existence of a Vaishnava temple or a Rama temple as Rama is an incarnation of Vishnu"."

"[The motifs found] ‘proved the existence of a 7th century Shiva temple’."

"So great was the compulsion and enthusiasm of the historians to somehow discredit the archaeological evidence unearthed at Ayodhya that one of them, Prof. Irfan Habib, who is known amongst his fellow historians as a great scholar of medieval India, ended up making a great professional howler. He announced that he had dated the artifacts found in the Ayodhya excavations, by the carbon dating technique, and found that these artifacts were of rather recent origin. And it so happened that an officer of the Archaeological Survey reviewed the procedures of Prof. Irfan Habib and found that if Prof. Habib’s dating procedures were to be followed then one would come to the conclusion that the reign of Emperor Akbar is yet to begin: It shall begin in 2009 A.D.!"

"In this early medieval period, ―a huge structure, nearly 50 m in north-south orientation was constructed which seems to have been short-lived, as only four of the fifty pillar bases exposed during the excavation belong to this level with a brick crush floor. On the remains of the above structure was constructed a massive structure with at least three structural phases and three successive floors attached with it. The architectural members of the earlier short-lived massive structure with stencil-cut foliage pattern and other decorative motifs were reused in the construction of the monumental structure having a huge pillared hall (or two halls) which is different from residential structures, providing sufficient evidence of a construction of public usage which remained under existence for a long time during the period VII (... twelfth to sixteen century A.D.)."

"There is sufficient proof of existence of a massive and monumental structure having a minimum dimension of 50 x 30 m in north-south and east-west directions respectively just below the disputed structure. In course of present excavations nearly 50 pillar bases with brickbat foundation, below calcrete blocks topped by sandstone blocks were found. The pillar bases exposed during the present excavation in northern and southern areas also give an idea of the length of the massive wall of the earlier construction with which they are associated and which might have been originally around 60 m (of which the 50 m length is available at present). The centre of the central chamber of the disputed structure falls just over the central point of the length of the massive wall of the preceding period which could not be excavated due to presence of Ram Lala at the spot in the make-shift structure [i.e., the makeshift temple erected after the demolition of the disputed structure]. This area is roughly 15 x 15 m on the raised platform. Towards east of this central point a circular depression with projection on the west, cut into the large sized brick pavement, signify the place where some important object was placed. ... The area below the disputed site thus remained a place for public use for a long time till the period VIII (Mughal level) when the disputed structure was built which was confined to a limited area ..."

"Destruction of a temple of classic north Indian style. Period VIII (2003 excavations): ―It was over the top of this construction [the temple of Period VI] during the early sixteenth century A.D. that the disputed structure [the Bābrī mosque] was constructed directly resting over it.‖"

"The Hon‘ble High Court, in order to get sufficient archaeological evidence on the issue involved ‗whether there was any temple/structure which was demolished and mosque was constructed on the disputed site‘, ... had given directions to the Archaeological Survey of India to excavate … where the Ground Penetration Radar [GPR] survey has suggested evidence of anomalies which could be structure, pillars, foundation walls, slab flooring etc. which could be confirmed by excavation. Now, viewing in totality and taking into account the archaeological evidence of a massive structure just below the disputed structure and evidence of continuity in structural phases from the 10th century onwards up to the construction of the disputed structure along with the yield of stone and decorated bricks as well as mutilated sculpture of divine couple and carved architectural members including foliage patterns, amalaka [a fruit motif], kapotapali doorjamb with semi-circular pilaster, broken octagonal shaft of black schist pillar, lotus motif, circular shrine having parnala (waterchute) in the north, fifty pillar bases in association of the huge structure, are indicative of remains which are distinctive features found associated with the temples of north India."

"The Mosque was built right over the walls of the demolished earlier structure, i.e., temple after levelling them. No independent foundations were laid for the mosque. In a hurry to raise the mosque, self-same material, i.e., bricks and stones of the demolished structure were used which is evident from the fragmentary nature of bricks. No full bricks have been found in the walls of the mosque. Secondly, the size and texture of the bricks (wherever length and width are available separately) tally with the size of bricks used in the demolished temple. Normally, structures of different periods have bricks of different sizes and texture."

"“In research carried out in the 1970s both Bakker and I relied heavily on the local tradition that Babar’s general had destroyed a temple built on Rama’s birthplace. This tradition is supposedly corroborated by the fact that in the mosque are pillars of a temple (which Bakker ascribes to the eleventh century). The same kind of pillars are also used in the grave of a Muslim pir who is in the local tradition considered to have been instrumental in the demolition of the temple..."

"“Nevertheless, in a BBC interview in 1991, [B.B.] Lal argued that there had been a Hindu temple for Rama/Vishnu on the spot now occupied by the mosque and that pillars of that temple had been used in constructing the [Masjid]. Lal suggested that further digging should be carried out in order to come up with more evidence - a suggestion that was denounced in the press by the historian Irfan Habib and others as a ploy to demolish the mosque.”"

"A shared pictorial and technical tradition stretched from India to Thrace, where the cauldron was made, and thence to Denmark. Yogic rituals, for example, can be inferred from the poses of an antler-bearing man on the cauldron and of an ox-headed figure on a seal impress from the Indian city of Mohenjo-Daro…Three other Indian links: ritual baths of goddesses with elephants (the Indian goddess is Lakṣmī); wheel gods (the Indian is Viṣṇu); the goddesses with braided hair and paired birds (the Indian is Hariti)."

"Recently a tendency to reverse this part of the historical model has been gaining momentum. In general, the positing of intercultural diffusion has gone out of fashion, as the pressures of the postcolonial era have confronted scholarship with a demand for special care in matters which might be interpreted as implying cultural hierarchy. Explanations of changes in ancient cultures through migration theory have given way to accounts that stress “indigenous cultural development.” An Indian scholar brings out the postcolonial issue: “While most of them [past scholars] broadly belonged, in one way or the other, to the School of Hyper-diffusionism initiated by Elliot Smith, locating the birth of Civilization at one or two places only, such as Egypt and Mesopotamia, some of us totally reject it and call it as [sic] ‘hangover’ of Imperialism of some European countries with no substance in it.” Witzel concurs about the change in scholarly attitude, saying, “There has been, recently, a strong reaction against the invocation of external agents of change, such as migration and diffusion.” But he goes on to suggest doubts about this reaction, saying, “However, that such forces [as migration and diffusion] were operating in the past is clear from innumerable historical examples.”"

"He discovered the fossil bones of the prehistoric Iguanodon in the Sussex Weald"

"Like the teeth of the recent iguana, the crown of the tooth is accuminated; the edges are strongly serrated or dentated; the outer surface is ridged, and the inner smooth and convex; and as in that animal the secondary teeth appear to have been formed in a hollow in the base of the primary ones, which they expelled as they increased in size. From the appearance of the fangs in such fossil teeth as are in a good state of preservation, it seems probable that they adhered to the inner side of the maxillae, as in the iguana, and were not placed in separate alveoli, as in the crocodile. [...] [T]he term IGUANODON, derived from the form of the teeth, (and which I have adopted at the sugges­tion of the Rev. W. Conybeare) will not, it is presumed, be deemed objectionable."

"Iguanodon was a relative of the duckbill. It won international fame as the first dinosaur made known to science, when it was dug from road-gravel quarries in Sussex, England, in 1822. The iguanodont's adaptations were styled after the duckbill's—closely packed chopping shredding teeth (although iguanodont's weren't as complex as duckbill's)."

"Iguanodon was about thirty feet (ten meters) long and weighed a few tons. It had a spike on its thumb for defense and a beak at the front of its mouth for snipping plants, and it could switch between walking on all fours and sprinting on its hind legs. Its line would eventually go on to produce the hadrosaurs, or duck-billed dinosaurs, [...]"

"In bas-relief he late has shown A horrible show, agreed— Megalosaurus, iguanodon, Palaeotherium Glypthaecon, A Barnum-show raree;"

"You'll find their footmarks all over the Hastings sands, in Kent, and in Sussex. The South of England was alive with them when there was plenty of good lush green-stuff to keep them going. Conditions have changed, and the beasts died. Here it seems that the conditions have not changed, and the beasts have lived."

"In the morning it was not long before we discovered the source of the hideous uproar which had aroused us in the night. The iguanodon glade was the scene of a horrible butchery. From the pools of blood and the enormous lumps of flesh scattered in every direction over the green sward we imagined at first that a number of animals had been killed, but on examining the remains more closely we discovered that all this carnage came from one of these unwieldy monsters, which had been literally torn to pieces by some creature not larger, perhaps, but far more ferocious, than itself."

"[T]he rise, fall and recovery of migration models is partly embedded in paradigm shifts in archaeological theory, with all the socio-political factors of academic competition that are entailed. ... The insistent clamour of the homeless, the migrant and the refugee is rarely still and we cannot but face its consequences on an academic as well as a human level."

"Migrationists consider that movement of people is responsible for the movement of pottery assemblages, and they think that it suffices to demonstrate that potteries have moved to demonstrate the migrations."

"There are several generations of archaeologists living in Europe whose life experiences bore the often devastating effects of invasions and migrations in two World Wars and their aftermaths. It is hard to resist the notion that these personal experiences did have an effect on the models of explanation which they proposed... I suggest... that the personal impact of migrations and invasions on archaeologists has been a factor much underestimated in past "explanation" of the changing modes of archaeological explanation. I would like to suggest that there is a yet largely untapped reservoir of information and insight about the writing of archaeological texts relating to the subjective experiences of scholars."

"These interpretations suggest the simple equation that 'material culture = people = language‘... Processual and post-processual developments in archaeological theory have surely enabled us to abandon such crude equations and to acknowledge that the dynamics of material culture, ethnicity and language are far more complex."

"The critical point is that language and ethnic shift can take place without radical change in the material particulars of life and with an amount of change in the gene pool so small as to be for all practical purposes undetectable. We should not replace the fallacy of assigning all significant culture change to migration with the fallacy of thinking that language shift and the spread of new ethnic self-identification occur only with major or radical cultural transformations."

"The linguistic attributes are mapped onto archaeological correlates: artifacts are selected, like the chariot, as well as ecofacts, like agriculture, or whole archaeological cultures (material assemblages). The archaeological correlates become some sort of labels or tags that one may employ in order to trace the supposed Indo-European populations. But, in fact, very little of the illustrative archaeological material actually exhibits specific Indo-European or Indo-Iranian traits; a question therefore arises: what is the relevance of archaeological material if any sort of assemblage present at the expected or supposed time/space spot can function as the tag of a linguistic group?"

"At one time social anthropologists used to complain that their archeologist colleagues had no sense of the overall coherence of human societies. Now [prehistorians] have become committed to a functionalism of a wholly naive sort. They seem to assume that cultural systems and language systems are bonded together and intrinsically stable over long periods of time. If societies are left alone, they stay put; otherwise, they roll across the landscape like impermeable billiard balls. If the archeological record shows that in fact changes have occurred, their occurrence is always explained as the conse­quence of a movement of population that carries with it the products (both material and immaterial) of a preexisting, alien, self-contained culture. As a rule, the alleged movement of people takes the form of a military conquest."

"If we count the gradual increase of china in Indian houses during the recent decades, and sit down to judge as future archaeologists with as mechanical an approach as is evident among those who equate pottery with people, we would find the entire country suffused by a new people. The same inference would be drawn from the sudden popularity of stainless steel followed by aluminum alloy and the like."

"Like all other archaeological cultures, there is no unanimity concerning the Indo- Iranian or Indo-Aryan ethnic identification of these burials either. Lyonnet wonders why, if they had been Indo-Aryans who had provoked or appeared at the time of the collapse of the Bactria and Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC), Namazga, and Harappan civilizations, they did not continue to foster the links between these regions, which had previously been connected for millennia. Rather, these connections collapse at this time (Lyonnet 1993, 83). She underscores the extreme paucity of metal objects found in the graves, which "is rather odd for a culture considered to come from the Andronovo people, famous for their metallurgy" (Lyonnet 1994a, 430). Moreover, "no trace of the horse is found, there is no evidence of any social differentiation, and, altogether, the material is rather poor" (430). As far as she is concerned, "if we are dealing with intruders, as some features suggest, and if it is certain that they are not Andronovians, we do not have enough evidence to identify them as Indo-Aryans. We can only compare their movement to the textually known much later migrations of two other groups, who, coming from 'the steppes,' went through Central Asia into India." These are the Kusanas around the beginning of our era, and the White Huns in the fifth century A.D.: "All these nomads, albeit at different periods, took exactly the same path, used exactly the same areas for their cemeteries consisting of kurgans that all look alike from the outside" (430)."

"Tribes that bury their dead in kurgans (which are so common over vast geographic and temporal expanses) have been migrating into India throughout its history, but these have not induced language shift across the entire north of the subcontinent. So one is hardly compelled to interpret the scanty evidence of the Bishkent and Vakhsh cultures as evidence of the arrival of a new language group on its way to Indo-Aryanize North India. Like the Andronovo culture, this culture does not enter the subcontinent either. Moreover, Piankova (1982) dates the graves to the last quarter of the second millennium, which is far too late for migrants who are supposed to already have completely settled down and written the hymns in the Indian subcontinent by this time, even allowing the lowest possible dates proposed by scholars for the Rgveda. Moreover, anyone prepared to gloss over the absence of horse bones in these sites cannot then deny the presence of the Indo-Aryans in the Indus Valley Civilization on these particular grounds."

"Mallory (1998) feels comfortable enough ascribing some form of Indo-Iranian identity to the Andronovo culture but admits that, "on the other hand, we find it extraordinarily difficult to make a case for expansions from this northern region to northern India . . . where we would presume Indo-Aryans had settled by the mid-second millennium BCE" (191). Referring to the attempts at connecting the Indo-Aryans to such sites as the Bishkent and Vakhsh cultures, he remarks that "this type of explanation only gets the Indo-Iranian to Central Asia, but not as far as the seats of the Medes, Persians or Indo-Aryans" (192). He points out that suggesting an Indo-Aryan identity for the BMAC requires a presumption that this culture was dominated by steppe tribes. However, "while there is no doubt that there was a steppe presence on BMAC sites, . . . this is very far from demonstrating the adoption of an Indo-Iranian language by the Central Asia urban population" (192)."

"“Recent discoveries and radiocarbon dates provide good evidence to consider anew the Vakhsh culture of southern Tajikistan. This “culture” is almost exclusively identified by its burials under kurgans (“classical Vakhsh culture”) except for one settlement, and by its handmade pottery. A detailed classification of the pottery coupled with the available dates or comparisons is presented here. It can now safely be dated between the second half of the 3rd millennium and the 17th century BC as shown by radiocarbon dates and is thus contemporary with the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC). A few Vakhsh pots have been found in southern Bactria up to Herat and parallels can also be found in graves from Gonur Depe. It has no connection with the Andronovo culture but presents affinities with communities of the Altai-Xinjiang area.”"

"Very few Indian universities offer archaeology. They are also fairly unenthusiastic about their approach to archaeological research. I know one full-fledged university archaeology department which, since its establishment in 1960, has only published the result of its first year of excavations in 1962. I know another university department – a Department of Indian History, Culture and Archaeology— where the results of excavations of a major Harappan site are not merely unpublished beyond a few pages but also the entire pottery collection from the site was reputedly taken out of the pottery bags and their contents were mixed up and buried in the trenches specifically dug for the purpose."

"The scientific back-up of the subject remains marginal in the country. The government is simply not bothered about setting up a national laboratory for archaeological dating and chemical and other analyses. Even the quality of the Ajanta paintings has been allowed to be compromised."

"I would say that the present state of affairs in Indian archaeology also shows, as the present state of affairs in the study of ancient India in the Indian universities does, that ‘ancient India’ does not figure conspicuously in the Indian middle class vision."

"My familiarity with the various shades of political opinion among Indian archaeologists convinces me that none of our political parties and organizations has a coherent and professional attitude to the Indian past, archaeological or otherwise."

"The tragedy is that, by and large, the Indian historians have very little understanding of field-archaeology and they just make a mess when they use archaeological evidence."

"It is clear...that Indian tradition, Vedic or Puranic, is not likely to help much in the interpretation of archaeological data. The theories propounded by reputed archeologists are laboured ones and based on pre-conceived notions. Most scholars have twisted the traditional accounts or invented their own legends to suit their interpretations because it is utterly difficult to apply the tradition as a whole to the field of pure archaeology involving one or more material cultures.... [The] majority of Indian traditions are unhistoric and coloured and therefore none of their archaeological interpretations would prove to be free from subjectivity.... Tradition and archaeology should not be mixed together in any form at least as far as Indian protohistory is concerned."

"In my assessment, the administrative regime that takes care of monuments has failed. My friends in ASI tell me that the agency has been tasked to do too many different things, with the result it doesn’t do any of those tasks well. Perhaps what we need is a separate agency to manage monuments."

"Ideas of invasions, diffusions, and conquests have obscured and hindered investigation into the region's indigenous cultural processes. To fully understand and appreciate the various solutions to cultural problems recorded in the South Asian archaeological record, alternative explanatory frameworks must be considered."

"The Mysore Archeological Department…came under the Mysore University… [But then] the department began to rust. A few years later, the [ancient] gold coins in the Museum were stolen under the watch of its Director… The Archeology Department has not published a single annual report in the last sixteen years… now the Department does not have a full-time Director…no new epigraphical research has been done in Karnataka over the last several years… from the past thirty-two years, Archeology Research was a compulsory subject in Kannada and History Honours… now, the Honours degree itself has been dropped."

"Archaeology in South Asia did not crystallize out of the informal archaeology of enthusiastic amateur South Asians, but was created by elite foreigners, at the capital, by an act of state."

"Sringaverapura is a site on the bank of the Ganga, not far upstream of Allahabad. Birch leaf fragments have been identified in its Black-and-Red Ware level dated around 800 BC at the site. The nearest source of birch leaf (Betula utilis or bhurja patra) is the Himalayas, possibly Garhwal hills. What is the point in importing these leaves to Srinagaverapura unless they were used for writing? This is certainly a piece of hard circumstantial evidence in favour of pre-Asokan existence of writing in early historic India."

"One of the main reasons why such hard proof or hard circumstantial proof is missing from ancient Indian studies is that our writings were generally inscribed on palm leaves or birch leaves and such writings have not survived. We seldom wrote on perish- able materials like clay which, once burnt, became well-nigh imperishable. This is how so much of the ancient Mesopotamian and Egyptian literature has survived whereas the surviving Indus civilisation corpus of writing is amazingly incomplete. This must be the reason why the administrative archives of ancient India have not survived. Some inscriptions do, in fact, imply that there were administrative store houses of documents. That the Indians preferred to record most of the things of their lives on palm leaves has been known even as late as the late nineteenth century when the Indian census recorders of the period returned their ‘proformas’ incised on palm leaves."

"Only those who have experienced it know how precisely exacting it is. Old palm-leaf manuscripts resemble dried firewood. They are in the danger of breaking apart the moment one touches it. They have to be separated with extraordinary delicateness, care and caution. After this begins the process of reading them. The palm-leaves must first be coated with the juice of leafy greens. It only then that the alphabets will show themselves in black strokes. This is followed by the trouble of unchaining the shackles of the Mōḍi script. This is perhaps the greatest difficulty — it is not easily understood by the people of our era [late 19th century - early or mid 20th century]. Verses written on palm-leaves are not split into neatly ordered feet [Pāda or lines in metrical poetry]. In fact, even different poems are not separated from one another. The whole inscription or poetical work is written like a single sentence from start to finish akin to a chain. Indeed, at the minimum, it takes more than half a day to read just one side of a palm-leaf manuscript... Mere scholarship is insufficient to undertake this kind of work. The person needs extraordinary levels of enthusiasm and a superhuman standards of patience."

"While I have seen few museum pieces for sale in Pakistan, there are a number of artifacts on the market that have recently been dug up in Afghanistan. Mujahideen commanders in all parts of the country are involved in this illicit activity, most notably in the east near the Hadda museum. An important Buddhist pilgrimage site in the second through seventh centuries, Hadda has been totally stripped of its exquisite clay sculptures in the Gandhara syle, which combines Bactrian, Greco-Roman, and Indian elements. Looted artifacts from Faryab and Balkh provinces in the north allegedly include jewel-encrusted golden crowns and statues, orbs (locally described as "soccer balls") studded with emeralds and all manner of exotic ephemera, as well as fluted marble columns similar to those found at Ai Khanoum in the northeastern province of Takhar. These are being carted away to embellish the houses of the newly powerful, according to witnesses."

"You have to remember that the items that have been stolen from the Museum or have been plundered, are not owned by only one person and usually not only by Afghans. It is usually one or two Afghans with five or six Pakistani partners. And the underground stolen art business in Pakistan is just as well organised and it is just as dangerous as the drug business. In fact, I have heard some people say that as far as the end-result is concerned, it’s even more profitable than drugs."

"The stone age did not end because the world ran out of stones, and the oil age will not end because we run out of oil."

"In the Neolithic Age savage warfare did I wage For food and fame and woolly horses’ pelt. I was singer to my clan in that dim, red Dawn of Man, And I sang of all we fought and feared and felt. * * * * * * * Here’s my wisdom for your use, as I learned it when the moose And the reindeer roamed where Paris roars to-night:— ‘There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays, ‘And—every—single—one—of—them—is—right!’"

"A sheep that had no wool saw horses, one of them pulling a heavy wagon, one carrying a big load, and one carrying a man quickly. The sheep said to the horses: "My heart pains me, seeing a man driving horses." The horses said: "Listen, sheep, our hearts pain us when we see this: a man, the master, makes the wool of the sheep into a warm garment for himself. And the sheep has no wool." Having heard this, the sheep fled into the plain."

"When first I whispered words of love, When first you turned aside to hear, The wingèd griffin flew above, The mammoth gaily gamboll’d near; I wore the latest thing in skins Your dock-leaf dress had just been mended And fastened-up with fishes' fins— The whole effect was really splendid."

"The palaeoanthropologists of the early twentieth century were thus able to put together a view of human evolution which can be seen as an extension of the cyclic or rhythmic theory of progress advocated throughout the Victorian era. Despite its emphasis on struggle as the means by which higher types displaced their primitive antecedents, this was no product of Darwinian gradualism. Most of its supporters rejected natural selection as the motor of progressive evolution, preferring to invoke some vaguely defined creative force in the central Asian heartland. The fact that both the concept of progress through cycles and the fascination with Asia as the centre of development survived well into the twentieth century reveals the power these Victorian ages had to shape the imagination. The echoes of Max Muller's account of Aryan migrations can still be heard in the theories of human origins by archaeologists and anthropologists committed to the idea of continuous evolution. But once the faith in continuous progress was undermined by growing militarism in the age of imperial rivalries, the model of progress through conquest emerged from the wings to extend its influence over ideas on human origins. The early twentieth century merely extended the sense of racial destiny that had been growing throughout the Victorian era."

"Contemporary methodologies, linguistic or archaeological, for determining the spoken language of a remote archaeological culture are virtually nonexistent. Simplified notions of the congruence between an archaeological culture, an ethnic group, and a linguistic affiliation millennia before the existence of texts is mere speculation, often with a political agenda. Archaeology has a long way to go before its methodology allows one to establish which cultural markers, pottery, architecture, burials, etc., are the most reliable for designating ethnic identity."

"Almost all anthropologists working on the Indian material have been having these archetypes ' before their mind , with the result that each skull has been taken singly and compared with one of the hypothetical racial types. If the comparison shows a closeness to a type , the skull has been regarded as belonging to that particular race . If , on the other hand , the resemblance is less exact , the skull has been relegated to a mixed group . It may very often happen that a single skull shows features that belong to two or more hypothetical types ; in such cases , the skull has been immediately considered to have been the result of mixture of these races . Sometimes , the most likely racial types ' have been considered in the skulls from a particular area , so that the conclusions could generally confirm a conventional story of invasion or migration put forward in history . Since the individual variability in physical characteristics is very great , it has not been difficult to find the type suitable in a particular situation from a collection of skeletal material."

"Legitimization of the colonial state became bound up with the intertwining of archaeology, anthropology and the Aryan theory of linguistic and racial origins."

"Reliance upon migrations as the principal agent of social change has been typical of Russian archaeological interpretations, along with a blurring of the distinction between ethnic, linguistic, racial, and cultural entities, the isolation of racial/ethnic groups by the craniometric methods of physical anthropology, and the use of linguistic paleontology to reconstruct the development of cultural groups."

"Archaeological cultures should not be viewed as homogeneous or growing like plants from single seeds; they are always heterogeneous and constantly in the making."

"A cultural tradition refers to persistent configurations of basic technologies and cultural systems within the context of temporal and geographical continuity. This concept facilitates a stylistic grouping of diverse archaeological assemblages into a single analytical unit, while limiting the need for establishing the precise nature of cultural and chronological relationships that link assemblages but imply that such relationships exist."

"The unsettled political conditions apparently encouraged clandestine diggings, and it seems that the ancient Bactrian region, centred in the Oxus valley which lies to the north of the Hindukush range, has been a good source of trade in illicit antiquities. In fact, the looted Bactrian graves, or rather, their antiquities surfacing in the western market, have been the major factor behind the postulate of an Oxus Civilization from the second half of the third millennium BC to about the middle of the second millennium BC."

"The national museum in Kabul which was inaugurated in 1924 and the most important repository of the excavated material from Afghanistan, has been systematically looted. To put this looting in its proper perspective we have to consider some recent events of Afghan political history. The Soviet troops were in Kabul in 1979 to protect the pro-Communist government of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. In late 1988 or early 1989 these troops went back to Russia, after fighting a losing war against the Afghan rebel groups or the Mujahideen who were liberally supported by Pakistan and the USA. The Islamic State of Afghanistan was established in April 1992, but there was no love lost among the rival factions of the Mujahideen. Kabul witnessed considerable fighting, and in the ensuing chaos the museum was looted, perhaps on several occasions. In an article (museum under siege’) in Archaeology in 1996 Nancy Dupree (1996), a well-known American scholar on Afghanistan, offered a list of the important looted material. This amounts to about 70 per cent of the museum’s material comprising most of its vast gold and silver coin collections, stone statuaries and ivories and also the famous Islamic metalwork of the Ghaznavid dynasty."

"Dupree’s analysis clearly suggests that ‘the museum was not plundered by rampaging gangs of illiterate Mujahideen’. The looters in 1993 were discriminating in what they took and apparently had both the time and the knowledge to select the most attractive, saleable pieces. For example, they removed from wooden display mounts only the central figures (depicting voluptuous ladies standing in doorways) of the delicate Begram ivory carvings. It is also telling that although some 2000 books and journals remain in the library, volumes with illustrations of the museum's best pieces are missing."

"You have to remember that the items that have been stolen from the Museum or have been plundered, are not owned by only one person and usually not only by Afghans. It is usually one or two Afghans with five or six Pakistani partners. And the underground stolen art business in Pakistan is just as well organised and it is just as dangerous as the drug business. In fact, I have heard some people say that as far as the end-result is concerned, it’s even more profitable than drugs."

"While I have seen a few museum pieces for sale in Afghanistan, there are a number of artifacts on the market that have recently been dug up in Afghanistan. Mujaheedin commanders in all parts of the country are involved in this illicit activity, most notably in the east near the Hadda museum. An important Buddhist pilgrimage site in the second through seventh centuries, Hadda has been totally stripped of its exquisite clay sculptures in the Gandhara style, which combines Bactrian, Greco-Roman, and Indian elements. Looted artifacts from Faryab and Balkh provinces in the north allegedly include jewel- encrusted golden crowns and statues, orbs (locally described as ‘soccer balls’) studded with emeralds and all manner of exotic ephemera, as well as fluted marble columns similar to those found at Ai Khanoum in the northeastern province of Takhar. These are being carted away to embellish the houses of the newly powerful, according to witnesses."

"Much prime settlement land from 20,000 BC to 5,600 BC is now underwater. Archaeological concentration on land gives a distorted picture of life before the Flood."