Abstract

Histories of heritage, legacies and traditions provide many examples of the manner in which ideational phenomena are often transformed into tangible, visible, evidence through archaeological practices. Additionally, the archaeological scholarship builds upon transcriptions of vision for fashioning the materiality of an absent past. Histories of archaeology and visualising, therefore, prompt us to take note of our constructs of valid evidence, and the manner in which we historicise and recall the past. The lecture shall draw upon early histories of the antiquarian scholarship, curation of collections, and archaeological surveys of India for demonstrating their epistemic values in exploring traditions of historiography, critiquing the ‘archaeology of origins’, which is on the rise within South Asia, and considering the practices and visual documents of archaeology as artefacts of history.