Archaeologies of the water-land of Bangladesh as critique of established historical narratives
Speaker: Prof. Swadhin Sen, archaeologist and Professor, Department of Archaeology, Jahangirnagar University, Dhaka

Chair: Prof. Nayanjot Lahiri, Professor of History, Ashoka University

Historical narratives of South Asia, even when they assert variabilities and contexts, tend to take some concepts, and standards for granted. Despite the debates and discussions on spatio-temporal heterogeneity, a ‘pan-Indian’ bias is explicit in the history of this region, especially in the period identified as the domain of historical archaeology (post c. sixth century BCE). Present Bangladesh, in these narratives, is predominantly a periphery or frontier on the east. The assumption is that the history of this frontier zone must inevitably be addressed in reference to a core or a centre. This lecture attempts to unsettle this established perception with some recent archaeological studies on a territory in which the separation between the land and water could be misleading and fatal. 

(Collaboration: Ashoka University)