Gregory Possehl in the context of University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology


Gregory Possehl in the context of University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

⭐ Core Definition: Gregory Possehl

Gregory Louis Possehl (July 21, 1941 – October 8, 2011) was a professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, United States, and curator of the Asian Collections at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. He was involved in excavations of the Indus Valley civilization in India and Pakistan since 1964, and was an author of many books and articles on the Indus Civilization and related topics. He received his BA in anthropology from the University of Washington in 1964, his MA in anthropology from the University of Washington in 1967, and his PhD in anthropology from the University of Chicago in 1974. He conducted major excavations in Gujarat (Rojdi, Babar Kot and Oriyo Timbo), Rajasthan (Gilund), and in January 2007, began an excavation at the UNESCO World Heritage site of Bat in the Sultanate of Oman.

He was an exponent of the view that the culture of the Vedic period is a direct successor of the Indus Valley Civilization. In his book Ancient Cities of the Indus he wrote that "the first point to be emphasized is that the problem seems not to be best stated as the "end" of a civilization, at least in the sense of a tradition, since there are abundant signs of cultural continuity in Sindh, Gujarat, the Punjab and adjacent areas of the North India."

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Gregory Possehl in the context of Bhirrana

Bhirrana, also Bhirdana and Birhana, (IAST: Bhirḍāna) is an archaeological site, located in a small village in the Fatehabad district of the north Indian state of Haryana. Bhirrana's earliest archaeological layers contained two charcoal samples dating to the 8th-7th millennium BCE, predating the Indus Valley civilisation, but occurring in the same levels with Hakra Ware pottery which had been dated to the 4th millennium BCE in other sites of the region, as well as "about half a dozen" other charcoal samples from the early levels of Bhirrana dated 3200-2600 BCE, and smelted copper artefacts indicating a Chalcolithic rather than Neolithic stage of development. The site is one of the many sites seen along the channels of the seasonal Ghaggar river, identified by ASI archeologists to be the Post-IVC, Rigvedic Saraswati river of c. 1500 BCE.

Scholarly interpretation and dating of Bhirrana, as with a number of other archaeological sites of ancient India, has been subject to contestation regarding the methodologies and ideology of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI): many senior officials of the ASI have been "embroiled in controversies" over pseudo-"scientific" efforts to legitimate the Hindutva ideology which identifies the ancient Harappans (incorrectly) with the Vedas and Sanskrit, in order to synthesize the nationalist narrative of Indian civilization as indigenous and continuous since its beginning, allegedly originating from the banks of the Saraswati River (rather than the Indus). A superintending archaeologist of the Bhirrana excavations was quoted as promoting the association of Harappans with the Vedas and the Saraswati river, and questions are being raised about the scientific quality of the excavations. Archaeologist Gregory Possehl—a leading expert of the Indus Valley civilization—expressed reservations "about temporal assertions made on the basis of radiocarbon dates" from Bhirrana.

View the full Wikipedia page for Bhirrana
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