Introduction and Definition
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 & 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...
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Nagar, M. 1967. The Ahar culture: an archaeological and ethnographic study. Unpublished PhD dissertation, Poona University.
Sankalia, H.D., S.B. Deo & Z.D. Ansari. 1969. Excavation at Ahar (Tambavati). Pune: Deccan College.
Sarkar, A. 2011a. Chalcolithic and modern potting at Gilund, Rajasthan: a cautionary tale. Antiquity 85: 994-1007.
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Shinde, V. & G. L. Possehl. 2005. A report on the excavations at Gilund, in C. Jarrige & V. Lefèvre (ed.) South Asian archaeology, 2001: proceedings of the 16th International Conference of the European Association of South Asian Archaeologists held in College de France, Paris, 2–6 July 2001: 292–302. Paris: Recherche sur les Civilisations.
Further Reading
Kramer, C. 1997. Pottery in Rajasthan: ethnoarchaeology in two Indian cities. Washington (DC): Smithsonian Institution Press.
Mishra, A. 2008. Beyond pots and pans: a study of Chalcolithic Balathal. New Delhi: IGRMS & Aryan Books International.
Mishra, V.N. 2007. Rajasthan: prehistoric and early historic foundations. New Delhi: Aryan Books International.
Saraswati, B. & N.K. Behura. 1966. Pottery techniques in peasant India (Anthropological Survey of India Memoir 13). Calcutta: Anthropological Survey of India.
Shinde, V. 2002. The emergence, development and spread of agricultural communities in South Asia, in Y. Yasuda (ed.) The origins of pottery and agriculture: 89-115. New Delhi: Roli Books.
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Sarkar, A. (2014). Ethnoarchaeology: Learning from Potters in Gilund. In: Smith, C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0465-2_1531
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