Architexturez South Asia
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Megalithic cist burial excavation at Enadimangalam in Kerala and its implications in cist burial architecture and burial practices
No full textIron Age-Early Historic culture in the southern part of Peninsular India is associated with early iron-using society in the region and is renowned for its burial architecture, ritual offerings, ceramics, iron implements and other material culture. The modern state of Kerala in the south-western corner of Peninsular India, while sharing the salient features of this Iron Age-Early Historic culture, exhibits unique types of laterite-made Megalithic burial architecture due to its geographic and physiographic peculiarities. This paper reports the findings from an excavation conducted in 2019 at Enadimangalam in Kerala and its implications for understanding cist burial architecture and burial practices. The excavated cist burial displays the features of a double-chambered cist with cot/bench made of stone slabs. Based on the evidence, the process of the construction of a cist burial is elucidated, and the possible indications of later modification are highlighted. Possibilities of the multiple uses of the same burial structure during the Iron Age-Early Historic period is suggested. The scattered distribution of burial structures in the region of Enadimangalam reflects the presence of smaller settlements and supports the possible multiple uses of the same burial. The importance of considering the landscape and its peculiarities in the further search for habitation evidence is highlighted, particularly in the context of a dearth of habitation evidence connected to the Megalithic burials in Kerala.</p
Constraining the chronology and ecology of Late Acheulean and Middle Palaeolithic occupations at the margins of the monsoon
No full textSouth Asia hosts the world’s youngest Acheulean sites, with dated records typically restricted to sub-humid landscapes. The Thar Desert marks a major adaptive boundary between monsoonal Asia to the east and the Saharo-Arabian desert belt to the west, making it a key threshold to examine patterns of hominin ecological adaptation and its impacts on patterns of behaviour, demography and dispersal. Here, we investigate Palaeolithic occupations at the western margin of the South Asian monsoon at Singi Talav, undertaking new chronometric, sedimentological and palaeoecological studies of Acheulean and Middle Palaeolithic occupation horizons. We constrain occupations of the site between 248 and 65 thousand years ago. This presents the first direct palaeoecological evidence for landscapes occupied by South Asian Acheulean-producing populations, most notably in the main occupation horizon dating to 177 thousand years ago. Our results illustrate the potential role of the Thar Desert as an ecological, and demographic, frontier to Palaeolithic populations.</p
The mnemonic transition: The rise of an anti-anticolonial memoryscape in Cape Verde
No full textThis article analyses the production of an anti-anticolonial memoryscape in Cape Verde in the 1990s. We will show how this process is bound up with a mnemonic transition that accompanied the economic and political transition taking place in the country and also marked by changes occurring internationally in the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the global expansion of multipartidarism. Proposing a broadening of the concept of memoryscape, we will examine the alterations produced in the public space, in the national symbols and in the valorization of events and personages that have marked the history of the archipelago. We find that they produce a mnemopolitical imaginary different from the anticolonial legitimacy that had emerged from a victorious liberation struggle against Portuguese colonialism and became hegemonic immediately after independence (1975–1991).</p
‘Drawing in’ other worlds: Addressing fragile heritage landscapes through cosmopolitical maps
No full textThis paper builds on the argument that large-scale infrastructural development in remote communities poses a threat to their local heritage landscape. This is done not only through physical intervention in landscapes (through bridges, roads, pipelines or ports) but also through imaginaries projected about development that tends to re-label local landscapes as hotspots for development. This paper explores drawing as a medium to explore fragile-heritage landscapes through the stories, folklores and experiences of local communities within their landscape. It proposes a mapping strategy that attempts to grasp the diminishing heritage landscapes of Gwadar, a coastal town in Pakistan which is being re-claimed as the hub of prosperity (port) connecting two infrastructural mammoths: the BRI land routes and maritime silk roads. Together with the community, their stories and memories, we ‘draw-in’ tangible, immaterial, invisible, human, spiritual and more-than-human entities, and their worlds that are at risk of erasure in the current wave of infrastructural development.</p
Producing Sacred Space in Secular Kitchens: South Asian Immigrant Women’s Hindu Shrines in American Domestic Architecture
No full textThis paper demonstrates the processes of spatial production achieved through the setup of a home shrine by newly arrived Hindu immigrant women inside American houses, particularly the kitchens. By focusing on the home shrine, the paper uses a gendered lens through which to understand vernacular architecture, since women often garner greater control over domestic objects and interiors than they do over construction of buildings. I propose that production of sacred space, achieved through domestic objects like home shrines, is a fluid process. Its location in the house can be more easily changed from one place to another. Compared to the permanent construction of buildings, this compliancy of form may appear less concrete for providing objective architectural analysis. However, I suggest that it is the opposite. The flexibility involved in women’s production process makes room for greater spatial negotiation and demonstrates the diversity of ways concrete domestic architecture is maneuvered to satisfy women’s religious needs over time. Further, the paper demonstrates the wide array of complex decisions that women have to make regarding body movements in the house and worship practices, achieved through material intervention, that speak of domestic architecture in less static and more dynamic ways. By tracing women’s experiences with domestic architecture as new arrivals in the country, and later, as permanent residents, the paper foregrounds women’s strong architectural contributions through the use of domestic objects that enable a gendered and consequently a more inclusive approach to the study of architectural space.</p
African Urban History, Place-Naming and Place-Making
No full textAfrican urban history can contribute towards understanding present-day land governance issues of SSA cities, through a post-disciplinary approach across disciplinary and sub-disciplinary boundaries. The chapter explores precolonial and colonial building forms, and the impact of colonial policies towards towns or townships, which discouraged Africans from urban living. Banished to peri-urban settlements, they lived in temporary structures, often under threat of demolition and displacement. A sense of place identity and attachment is difficult in such circumstances, but place-naming and community histories can help build local civil society so that better rules for land governance, both formal and informal, can be negotiated.</p
Death traps: Holes in urban India
No full textThis article is an ethnographic study of potholes in roads in urban India. The article describes different forms of attention to potholes, including cases of media advocacy, clinical reflections on injury and attempts by an accident survivor to document danger on the roads. Throughout, it argues for attention to the embodiment of infrastructure, and particularly, how people move through infrastructures. The article stems from a broader research project about traumatic injury from traffic accidents, many due to potholes. Taking these cases as sentinels of urban wound culture, the article asks: What if urban theory took wounding as a characteristic feature of everyday urbanism? What might this mean for studies of infrastructure’s affordances, risks and embodiment?</p