Review: Rafiullah Khan ed. (2025) Princely Archaeologies and Plural Sovereignties in Modern South Asia. Archaeopress, Oxford

Abstract

The scientific output on South Asia in the fields of archaeology and ancient history is colossal. Especially in the last 15 years, the number of publications articles, (whether or proceedings—so increased many!) exponentially. books, conference has Until around 2000 it used to be the researcher’s job, and a point of honor, to keep up to date by frequenting libraries, especially the ‘new arrivals’ sections, ordering books from catalogs received by mail, keeping handwritten lists of works to order, and subscribing to the most important journals... It was a meticulous, careful task, on which the scholar’s entire work and prestige depended. There was nothing worse than being caught out by a colleague in writing, or—worse still—during a public discussion, for not having cited this or that publication out of ignorance. The journals to be consulted could be counted on the fingers of two hands, new books appeared at a rate of two or three a year, sometimes less, sometimes none. What was written and published was intended to be valid for years and years, and scholars often waited decades before publishing their data, because they were always attentive to revisions, revisions of revisions, corrections of revisions... Always with the idea of writing something ‘definitive’. Today, it’s the opposite. Every month, at least 10 works of some importance to the discipline are published, and every year at least an half a dozen books are published, designed more as ‘instant books’, with partial data and interpretative models thrown into the air like the Albionian arrows in Shakespeare’s Battle of Agincourt. Not to mention the new journals: at least two or three new journals a year from the most remote corners of the globe with increasingly long and obscure titles. All indexed: you exist because you are certified. You are certified, therefore you are valid (regardless of what you write!). Barrage fire, paper artillery (not paper: digital bites!) obscuring the clear sky of science and knowledge. Background noise rather than harmonies of thought. “Sorry, I didn’t see it!”, “You didn’t send it to me,” “Was it online?” These are now the excuses of researchers, who have become deaf to the excessive noise of the artillery.