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The Prehistory of Sri Lanka: an Ecological Perspective, memoir volume 8 of the Archaeological Survey of Sri Lanka, is the first comprehensive, in- depth account to have been written on the subject. It is the definitive text on the prehistoric archaeology of the island. The systemic interaction of men and environment is viewed within a time-frame spanning over 130,000 years – probably 300,000 and possibly 500,000- up to the beginning of the historical of Sri Lankan culture, an aspect which has hitherto been enshrouded in myth, legend and archaeological nebulosity.
The range of topics covered is as wide as can be conceived. The focus is on dating. There has been such vagueness on this subject that it was not so much as known whether the Old Stone Age (Palaeolithic) is represented on the island or not. Both the cultural and environmental sequences are explicitly related to a chronological framework. The interpretations are based on a very wide – so wide as to seem disparate – spectrum of date. The relevance of the different components of Sri Lanka’s environment is considered in the light of postulated climatic shifts during the last half – million years in the Monsoon- dominated tropics and further afield. Novel hypotheses are presented as regards South Asian correlates lf coldwarm climatic fluctuations in higher latitudes. The cultural traits considered are primarily the ‘core’ elements of technology, subsistence and settlement, with art, ornament, mortuary, ritual, and physical anthropology as secondary foci. The cultural record, stretched on a chronological framework comparable to that of the effective environments, is viewed against the latter, leading up to the formulation of hypotheses on man environment interaction patterns. These propositions are based on ethnographic analogy incorporating data on diverse South and Southeast Asian hunter- gatherer groups.
The stress being on chronology, amongst the salient points to emerge are (a) secure evidence of settlements in Sri Lanka by ca. 130,000 years ago, probably by 300,000 BC and Possibly by 500,000 BC; (b)the manufacture of sophisticated ‘geometric microlithic’ stone tools by 27,000 BC; (c) the existence of a protohistoric Early Iron Age culture, breeding horses and practicing iron production and paddy cultivation, as early as 900 BC; and (d) the discovery of writing in Brahmi script, the ancestor of all indigenous South Asian scripts, in contexts dated to ca. 500 BC, thereby increasing its known antiquity in South Asia by at least 200 years.
Technologically, the enigmatic absence in Sri Lanka of the Acheulean tradition of making stone tools in the Old Stone Age is discussed from several angles within the context of the peninsular Indian situation, and certain Middle Palaeolithic elements identified for the first time on the island. The anomalously early appearance of geometric microliths constitutes another aspect of prehistoric technology that is constitutes at length, as is the other enigma of the absence of the Neolithic tradition of making polished axes and pottery as represented in peninsular India. With regard to subsistence traits, the broad- spectrum exploitation of plants and animals, at lest over the last 35,000 years, is discussed against a backdrop of present – day practices of hunting and gathering wild food plants and honey in Sri Lanka. Prehistoric settlements configurations are dealt with, leading to hypotheses on fluctuations in population densities, based on ethnographic date. The formulation of future research strategy is impelled by a concise statements of the current problematique. A comprehensive index provides ready access to practically every item of information incorporated in this work.
Methodologically, with reference to the interpretation of the archaeological record, the explicit use of a theoretical framework of cultural palaeo -ecology , of ethnographic analogy and of a diverse array of environmental data – ranging from meteorology to biomass statistics – has broken new ground in South Asian archaeology. The analytical system employed on the stone tools is similarly avant garde for lithic systematic in general, with applications to a wide range of non- specialized assemblages in the tropics. The structuring of the data and the resultant hypotheses constitute a vertically integrated hierarchy – leading up from the simple (where the relationship between data and inference is obvious ) as the complex (where simple and seemingly disparate propositions coalesce into complex hypotheses). This In itself is of considerable methodological import in that it reflects a research design that has been thought through from start to finish. The upshot is a work of immense scope and depth, with immediate and long – term relevance to the archaeology of South Asia as a whole, which is likely to be the springboard for prehistoric research in Sri Lanka for several decades to came.
The author, S.U.Deraniyagala (M.A., Cantab.; Postgrad. Dip., Inst. Arch. Lond.; Ph.D., Harvard), has been Assistant Commissioner (Excavations ) of the Archaeological Survey of Sri Lanka from 1968 to 1983.Since then he has been adviser and is at present the Director- General of the Archaeological Survey. Deraniyagala is currently completing the initial stage of a research programme which concerns the archaeology of the final prehistoric to Early Historic periods of the island design which dealt with the prehistoric period per se, and as such its preliminary results are set out addenda in the present publication.
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