Ethnoarchaeology in the Field: Learning from Potters in Gilund

Abstract

Ethnoarchaeology is an ever-expanding subdiscipline within archaeology, and pottery undoubtedly gets more than its fair share of attention. But with recent social and economic trends, it can be seen that opportunities of undertaking certain kinds of ethnoarchaeological study are themselves diminishing. By an interesting coincidence, the village of Gilund in Rajasthan, NW India, was host to an important early third millennium BCE, Chalcolithic settlement of Ahar-Banas Complex (Sankalia et al 1969; Shinde and Possehl 2005), and at the same time to some of the last indigenous potters still working in the twenty-first century CE. The modern village of Gilund is located approximately 1.5 km from the archaeological site of Gilund, northeast of the modern village. The potters are locally called Kumhar. According to the potters and their family members, use of earthenware or ceramic vessels is no longer profitable because of modernization and the popularity of stainless steel vessels. None of their children have taken up this tradition, which is therefore likely to disappear with the present generation of adults. These potters will be the last to practice, and in this respect ethnoarchaeology is itself under threat (Fig. 33.1).