Finding Forgotten Cities – How the Indus Civilization was Discovered - Hardcover

Lahari, Nayanjot

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1905422180 ISBN 13: 9781905422180

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2006

Synopsis

In the autumn of 1924, the scholar-archaeologist John Marshall made an announcement that rewrote the history books: he proclaimed the discovery of the civilization of the Indus valley. Within weeks, Marshall's discovery was recognized as on the same scale as the unearthing of Troy and of Crete. Spanning nearly a century, "Finding Forgotten Cities" tells the full story of Marshall's discovery for the first time. The Indus discovery was the work of many individuals: the collector-traveller Charles Masson, who first described Harappa; Alexander Cunningham, the archaeological pioneer and Harappa's first excavator; Daya Ram Sahni, Rakhaldas Banerji, and Madho Sarup Vats, the discerning diggers who uncovered Harappa and Mohenjodaro; Luigi Pio Tessitori, the Italian linguist-turned-explorer who unearthed Kalibangan but never lived to tell the tale of his exploits; government officials of all kinds who, as self-taught archaeologists, stumbled upon significant clues; and, presiding over the whole process, John Marshall, a Cambridge classicist brought by Lord Curzon to India as Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India, the man who finally pieced into place the tantalising jigsaw of data on the long-forgotten Indus civilization. Based on previously unknown archival materials, "Finding Forgotten Cities' presents a powerful narrative history of how one of the key sites of ancient civilisation was unexpectedly unearthed.

About this title

About the Author

Nayanjot Lahiri is Professor, History Department, Delhi University. She is the author of Pre-Ahom Assam (1991) and The Archaeology of Indian Trade Routes (1992); co-author of Copper and Its Alloys in Ancient India (1996); and editor of The Decline and Fall of the Indus Civilization (2000) as well as an issue of World Archaeology entitled The Archaeology of Hinduism (2004).

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1905422180
• ISBN 13: 9781905422180
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 410