Architexturez South Asia
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Riverfront Gardens and City Walls of Mughal Agra: A Study of Their Locations, Extent and Subsequent Transformations Using Remote Sensing and GIS
No full textAnalysing old maps and correlating patterns with remote sensing (RS) images have been a useful technique for identifying features of cultural heritage. The present work has conducted a geospatial analysis of Mughal Agra by comparing historical maps and satellite imagery. This paper make two distinct contributions: (1) it expands existing findings on the riverfront Mughal city by identifying the position and footprint of all the riverfront complexes (by complex we mean property that have or had Mughal mansions, gardens or tombs) marked in a Mughal map of 1720, and (2) it makes original contribution by delineating the two-tiers of city walls and further attempts to comprehend the spatial transformations of the city since the Mughal period. This exploration resulted in recognizing traces of many lost historical built forms like city walls, gateways and riverfront complexes those of which have transformed, integrated, camouflaged or sometimes lost within the urban fabric of the present city of Agra.</p
Feeding the herds: Stable isotope analysis of animal diet and its implication for understanding social organisation in the Indus Civilisation, Northwest India
No full textThe way that people manage their livestock tells us about their interactions with the landscape, particularly the nature of adaptation to specific environments, social organisation, resilience and long-term farming sustainability. Globally, there is considerable variation in how these practices are manifested, due to differences in water availability, levels of environmental diversity and aridity, and also the nature of cultural choices. South Asia's Indus Civilisation (c.3000–1500 BCE) provides an important opportunity for investigating how populations managed their animals, because the region shows considerable diversity in rainfall distribution, seasonality and intensity, which results in marked environmental variability that is susceptible to change over time. The latter is particularly significant when it comes to consideration of the impact of the 4.2 ka BP event and its relation to the deurbanisation of the Indus Civilisation.
This paper presents carbon isotope data from animal teeth from nine archaeological sites distributed across northwest India that are suitable for exploring how diverse practices were, and how animal management strategies changed through time. These data show clear differentiation in feeding practices between species, with cattle and water buffalo consuming very high proportions of C4 plants, while sheep and goat ate varying quantities of C3 and C4 plants. This pattern is generally consistent across sites and throughout different periods, suggesting that the strategy was adapted to a range of environmental conditions and settlements of different sizes. We suggest that humans controlled cow and water buffalo diets, and they were likely provided with fodder. In contrast, sheep and goats had a less controlled diet, and were presumably more likely to roam the landscape. These animal management strategies must have involved some separation of tasks, although it remains unclear if this was on a household, settlement or population level.
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Cultural evolutionary paradigms and technological transformations from the Neolithic up to the Indus urban period in South Asia
No full textStudies of Indus ceramics, especially considerations of raw materials, manufacturing tools and techniques, have tended to argue for a) local technological developments within South Asia and b) linear evolutionary trajectories that played out across thousands of years. The concept of a linear evolution of ceramic technologies in particular has had a significant impact on research at several levels, and in a previous paper we addressed issues concerning the theoretical frameworks adopted for the interpretation of archaeological data in South Asia.1 We noted that culture historic paradigms remain prevalent, and that there has been a tendency to focus on certain styles and types of artefacts to build seriations and identify archaeological ‘cultures’, which are often equated to ethnic groups or major phases of socio-political transformation. This paper aims to take the theoretical debate one step further, by looking at studies of technological transmission and transformation and considering the underlying tendency among researchers to adopt demic diffusion-based interpretations. The first part of this paper reviews the development of ceramic technologies from the Ceramic Neolithic up to the Indus urban period to understand how certain themes have developed. It will particularly discuss how more ‘evolved’ technologies are typically seen to have been adopted, homogenously replacing older and less sophisticated manufacturing methods, mostly in view of possible functional or economic gains. The second part will focus on ceramics from northwest India, and will explore evidence for variable regional technologies and resistance to innovation. Our broader aim is to strengthen theoretical mindfulness in this field of research and thus to stimulate dialogue, rather than provide solutions.</p
The Roads (Not) Taken: The Materiality, Poetics and Politics of Infrastructure in Manipur, India
No full textRoads are bitumen covered concrete metaphors of modernity and development, and they materially represent fantasies, collective hopes, and aspirations of future(s). They symbolize movement, connectivity, transactions and transportation, and eminently reflect governmentality. Our article is about Manipur’s connective infrastructures, and it focuses on internal roads, and a border highway that connects Imphal (Manipur’s capital city) to Dimapur at Nagaland in North-east India. We explain the infrastructural deficit within Manipur and decision-making about them being influenced by a hill-valley socio-ecological ethnic distributional conflict. The road links and is part of the uneven development route. We provide an ethnographic account of a truck journey undertaken between Imphal and Dimapur in 2018, and this enables us to understand routinized corruption and the collusion of state and non-state actors therein. The road is the symbol of hope, and a developmental desire, and epitomizes state’s governmentality and developmental project of progress, nonetheless it also gets transformed into the central locale of political protest, ethnic conflict when ethnic groups appropriate it forcibly to erect blockades and organize protests in its arterial space. The roads and highways spatially produce and reproduce (il)legality, (il)legibility, and (il)legitimacy of the Indian state. Our ethnographic research unpacks and invokes the multivalence of roads.</p
The right to an urban history: The Gaza Master Plan, 1975–1982
No full textAccepting frameworks promulgated by the Israeli occupation, public discourse has often debated Gaza as a “problem” to be solved, treating it more like a political quandary than a concrete city. Recent scholarship on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict explicitly problematized this approach and resisted the subsumption of Gaza city into the larger geopolitical unit of the eponymous Strip. This article contributes to this new body of critical work by addressing the dispossessory dynamics stitched into Gaza’s urban fabric through an episode from its urban and architectural history. It argues that everyday issues cannot be ignored when analyzing Gaza within the colonial paradigm: indeed, under colonial conditions, these everyday issues inevitably become a site of conflict. Based on archival materials and interviews with key actors involved in the Gaza Master Plan, the article discusses Gaza as a material city with urban institutions and a cast of professional actors. The planning process reveals fundamental tensions regarding the urban status of Palestinian refugees, who became captives in the clash between Palestinian nationalism and Israeli occupation as it played out in the politics of Israeli urban and regional development.</p
Open letter to William J.R Curtis on IIMA ‘restoration’, wanting return of Indiana Jones franchise!
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Issue of the Proposed Demolition Plan of the Dorm Buildings on the IIMA Campus Designed by Louis Kahn
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Attn:
Prof Errol D'Souza- Director IIMA
CC:
Gurpreet Singh
Salil Ranadive
Tara Rao
Jaydeep Bhagat
CC: Times of India Ahmedabad
CC: Times of India Baroda
SUB: Issue of the Proposed Demolition Plan of the Dorm Buildings on the IIMA Campus Designed by Louis Kahn Strong Unequivocal opposition from the FAAA- CEPT University's Apex Architects Alumni Body- Endorsed in their AGM yesterday
Dear Sir
In the context of the above issue/ Attached is the Formal Communique from the FAAA- the Architects Alumni Association of CEPT University- constituting Pan India Member Alumni as well as Members from across the World
In the AGM- the Body has unequivocally passed the Resolution Opposing the Move to Demolish the Dorm Buildings on the IIMA Campus- Designed by Master Architect Louis I Kahn. The Board Members, the Governing Council & the Member Representatives of the Alumni have condemned this move in a Singular Voice
The formal letter communique conveying the same matter is attached here
Regards & on behalf of the President FAAA
From the FAAA Secretariat.
Ref :
Gurpreet Singh- President- FAAA- (Cell no : 98110 xxxxx)
New Delhi
<hr /
Films as source of everyday life and energy use: A case of Indian cinema
No full textDrawing from film studies, this paper introduces a new, experimental method to understand domestic practices and energy use in the home. The paper adopts the methodology of the AHRC CineMuseSpace project and applies it in the context of energy studies. A detailed keyword ontology was developed in order to identify practices, technologies and energy use at home. 19 Indian films, based in chawl housing in Mumbai, were analysed. The keyword ontology was then applied to the film fragments extracted in a database. This allowed us to map the presence and use of domestic technologies in film, and where and how everyday practices were performed. The analysis was followed by site observations, and re-watching the films, building on the embodied knowledge from site. We believe there are three points to demonstrate the usefulness of this method. First, it gave us an understanding of actual behavior in homes revealed by films across the time period of four decades. Second, Indian cinema offered a vast library of demonstrations of the architecture and life of chawls in use. Third, movies are not produced in a social vacuum and reflect the values of the social milieu in which they are made, revealing social structures at home. The novelty of the research lies in its methodological approach to using film data as a reflective tool to understand everyday life and energy use at home, highlighting the importance of arts and humanities research in mediating often highly technical approach of energy studies.</p
Automated detection of archaeological mounds using machine-learning classificationof multisensor and multitemporal satellite data
No full textThis paper presents an innovative multisensor, multitemporal machine-learning approach using remote sensing big data for the detection of archaeological mounds in Cholistan (Pakistan). The Cholistan Desert presents one of the largest concentrations of Indus Civilization sites (from ca. 3300 to 1500 BC). Cholistan has figured prominently in theories about changes in water availability, the rise and decline of the Indus Civilization, and the transformation of fertile monsoonal alluvial plains into an extremely arid margin. This paper implements a multisensor, multitemporal machine-learning approach for the remote detection of archaeological mounds. A classifier algorithm that employs a large-scale collection of synthetic-aperture radar and multispectral images has been implemented in Google Earth Engine, resulting in an accurate probability map for mound-like signatures across an area that covers ca. 36,000 km2. The results show that the area presents many more archaeological mounds than previously recorded, extending south and east into the desert, which has major implications for understanding the archaeological significance of the region. The detection of small (<5 ha) to large mounds (>30 ha) suggests that there were continuous shifts in settlement location. These shifts are likely to reflect responses to a dynamic and changing hydrological network and the influence of the progressive northward advance of the desert in a long-term process that culminated in the abandonment of much of the settled area during the Late Harappan period.</p