Human Skeletal Studies in India: A Review

Abstract

The historiographical developments in the study of archaeological human remains in India from the late 1880s until the present are reviewed here. In these years, the subject witnessed many changes in methodological and theoretical aspects. The chapter views these changes as three major steps and examines the course of the discipline in the light of the new findings and new technologies. Archaeological human remains have made an interesting journey from just cataloguing and reporting of the findings, to racial classification based exclusively on craniometry, to becoming a part of an appendix, and to becoming the main focus of research after 1980s. The current stage of the development of the subject is interesting as it requires having collaborations and participations from different disciplines like chemistry, genetics, medicine, physical and social anthropology, ethnography and archaeology to facilitate a better understanding of bygone populations.