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Q3. Describe the concepts of prehistory or archaeological anthropology.
Ans. Prehistoric archaeology is the study of the past before historical records began. It
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is a field of research that looks at all the pre-urban societies of the world. It also has
distinctive set of procedures for analysing material remains so that archaeologists can
reconstruct their ecological settings. In many parts of the world, literate societies
evolved at a very recent date, not much before the last two centuries of the Christian era
and even where such records are available their antiquity does not go back beyond the
last four millennia, whereas the story of human existence covers a huge time span. It has
been rightly said that 99% of the story of human existence falls within the domain of
prehistory (Renfrew and Bahn, 2007). Archaeology provides a system and method to
understand cultures through material remains of this prehistoric period. Prehistory also
refers to the life of early hunter-gatherers and subsequent farming communities. It
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speaks about centralised human societies which caused the rise of civilizations (Renfrew
and Bahn, 2007). Prehistory does not stop at the doors of these societies but also
investigates those cultural systems which continued hunter-gatherer or pastoral life
style despite technological advancements in other parts of the world (Renfrew and
Bahn, 2007).
Studies in Prehistory took a discrete shape in the middle of the eighteenth century and
continued in a formative stage all throughout the century and also during the first half
of the next century. During the middle of the Nineteenth century one can see typical
features of descriptive stage appearing in the publications from Western Europe.
Nineteenth century ended with the beginning of a search for possible explanations of
discovered facts in many parts of Europe. The development curve of Indian Prehistory,
seen in this light will appear to be highly skewed because we seem to be still continuing
with the descriptive stage.
Archaeological anthropology provides a methodical system comprising various
sophisticated methods of analysis. Considering the vast time span of prehistoric period,
the absence of such a system would have made the system non-functional. Prehistoric
archaeology is also known as palaeoarchaeology. The term “palaeo” had its origin in the
Greek word “palaios” meaning ancient. Palaeoarchaeology denotes archaeological
investigations of ancient periods but not necessarily of the prehistoric era.
Prehistoric archaeology originally developed as a part of the Culture-Historical
Paradigm. The main objective of this paradigm was to understand prehistoric cultural
sequence of a given area and origin and dispersion of that particular prehistoric
population (Bhattacharya, 1996). Later other objectives such as studies of cultural life
ways or laws which govern cultural processes became part of prehistoric researches.
Temporal Division in Prehistory: Temporal divisions and periodisations of
prehistoric times help in arranging material remains in sequential orders. Time has no
division to mark its progress and any temporal division only exists in human mind and
thoughts. These divisions are basically relative in nature and no unit of time can be
compared with any other. Concepts of change, variability, continuity and direction are

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