Methods in World History by Arne Jarrick

Author:Arne Jarrick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Nordic Academic Press
Published: 2016-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Concluding discussion

It is not surprising that there will be different types of remains in Sweden and Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka has been inhabited for almost three times as long as Sweden. Sweden has been thinly populated through time, rural, and, up until the nineteenth century, very poor, whereas Sri Lanka shows clear indications of early high population density areas, early central settlements and an affluent lay and religious elite, consuming monumental architecture, but not constructing it themselves. Sweden is located in the boreal forest, stretching up to and beyond the Polar circle, on the northwestern periphery of earlier major areas of high population density, far from the ancient trade-route highways. Sri Lanka, on the other hand, is located just north of the equator, directly on the early marine highway across the Indian Ocean. One may also note that in Sweden, Christian churches belong to the architectural heritage, and in Sri Lanka, Buddhist stupas and Hindu temples. But this is not the focus of the comparative perspective discussed in this chapter.

What has been discussed above is how a historically determined difference in data capture creates a problem for research with a world-history-perspective. Examples were taken from Europe (Sweden) and South Asia (Sri Lanka).

Two problems were identified in this chapter: high and low resolution of field data and a social bias in selection of sites for documentation. The expression high and low resolution of field data relates to a difference in degree of coverage in the respective areas of similar types of activities relevant for world history researchers. The “social bias” relates to a disregard of the primary producers in historical archaeological research in South Asia.

One disturbing result of this social bias is how the creative, reflective, active local population come forward in recent interpretations of the archaeological record in Europe, in contrast to the anonymous, silent contributors to the affluence and glory of kings and religious elites (and colonial powers) in South Asia.

Archaeological and palaeo-ecological field data has increased during the past four decades in Northern Europe. It includes data with a bearing on social organization and, hence, differential access to various resources, including the labour of others. It also includes a greater emphasis on research regarding rural settlements and production sites. Thus the possibility has increased to also understand the social dynamics behind changing land use patterns.

When these types of field data have been collected in South Asia, the same questions are seldom asked. When scholars do ask such additional questions, and even succeed in showing a picture differing from the one inherited from the Orientalist research tradition, the work is not taken up as part of the grand narrative or the mainstream, commonly agreed upon, story.

This being systematically so, what has been attempted here is not primarily to suggest types of fieldwork that could help fill the lacunae seen in comparisons to the rich archaeological database for settlement and land use history in Western Eurasia. It is not a lack of awareness among the archaeological community in South Asia that constitutes the problem, as the Sri Lankan examples showed.

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