Chapter Three

PHOTOGRAPHS IN
SIR JOHN MARSHALL’S
ARCHAEOLOGY
Sudeshna Guha

A
photograph (fig. 68a) depicting the lower half
of the Qutb Minar, in the personal collection of
John Marshall, bears the following instruction on
its reverse: “in mounting, the lower photo [is] to be placed
beneath [the] upper, overlapping, and not above it”.

Taken by a staff photographer of the Archaeological Survey

of India, this photograph dates from the period when the
Survey had completed the restoration of monuments situated
inside the Qutb complex at Mehrauli, New Delhi. The note
was written by J.A. Page (then in charge of completing the
work), who wanted an exact representation of the entire
Minar for his magnum opus, The Historical Memoirs on the
Qutb: Delhi.1 Page’s instruction was carefully followed. The
photograph was aligned with another, showing the top four
storeys of the Minar (fig. 68b), and the re-photographed
composite image appeared as Plate 17a in his book.

67. J M (.)

Dal Lake, Srinagar, c.1903–20
Silver Gelatin Print, 104 x 155 mm
138 Sudeshna Guha 139

68a. A S  I

Qutb Minar, Top Four Balconies, New Delhi, 1919–20
Silver Gelatin Print, 278 x 159 mm

Facing page
68b. A S  I
Qutb Minar, First Balcony, New Delhi, 1919–20
Silver Gelatin Print, 278 x 159 mm
140 Sudeshna Guha
There is nothing unusual about Page’s directives, for despite
the critical historiography that has developed around the
nature of photography from as early as the middle of the
nineteenth century, photographs are still often treated as
‘facts’ about things. However, the note alerts us to the extent
to which our expectation from photographs are embedded
in the ways in which we bid them to perform. For, like all
material things, photographs too accrue meanings through
our engagement with them.
Among all the disciplines in the humanities and social
sciences, it is perhaps archaeology that continues to produce
the largest number of photographs. From the 1860s, i.e.,
since the associated technologies of photography allowed
for a cheaper, more effective and easier way to document
and preserve information, photography has been developed
as one of the principal methods for documenting
archaeological work. Having asserted their authority over
most other visual formats – such as paintings, models
and casting operations – as “imprints of the world,”2
photographs became seminal for conveying the methods
and aims in archaeological practice by the beginning of the
twentieth century.3 Yet, despite this long association with
the technology and its products, the varied ways in which
photographs are used for creating what is often considered
archaeological knowledge remains an unexplored terrain,
even though an increasing number of self-reflexive
professional archaeologists now concede that “perception
and representation are intimately related.”4 This volume,
which germinates from an archaeologist’s personal collection
of ‘field’ photographs, offers an opportunity for bringing
to our awareness the presence of photographs as historical
objects, as artefacts to which meanings are continuously
attributed, which mediate between disciplinary principles
and praxis, and forge as well as participate within
wider “visual economies”5 of knowledge production on
archaeological realities.
As Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India,
John Marshall set the parameters for archaeological work
in modern South Asia. His efforts at establishing the
Survey’s supremacy in directing this work within British
India effected a subtle, though firm, shift away from the
antiquarian pursuits of his predecessors of the nineteenth
century, and this aided developments, especially in the
context of independent India, for archaeology to emerge
as a unique field-based discipline. Created on the cusp
of changing intellectual perspectives with respect to the
scope of historical investigations, the photographs from
Marshall’s tenure in the Survey expectedly assert his own
participation in developing archaeology as a modern
scientific discipline.
This essay aims to present some of the ways in which
Marshall made use of photographs to cultivate specialist
knowledge, and the tensions around these processes of
knowledge formation. My main objective is to bring out
the importance of photographs as things with which we
create ‘facts’. I hope to convey that photographs are what we
make them to be, and in this respect, they are rather similar
to the material an archaeologist excavates from the ground.
Neither is self-revelatory, yet both appear to be so, and are
very often treated as such. The minimal (in fact, virtually
non-existent) intellectual engagement with photographs
produced within the field of archaeological enquiry
during the twentieth century could well be a reflection of
disciplinary developments within the empirical language
of positivist science in which, to quote Poole, “physical
characteristics are cited as visible and irrefutable,”6 and
which impedes professional archaeologists, even today,
from looking beyond the ‘appearances’ of their excavated
finds. However, as this essay shows, archaeologists often
establish their variants of archaeological knowledge through
photographs. Therefore, exploring the usage of the Survey’s
photographs leads to an understanding of the manner in
Photographs in Sir John Marshall’s Archaeology 141
which archaeological evidence is often crafted and ratified
purely through a visual vocabulary, and predominantly
through photographs.
Although my concerns here relate to the ways in which
we often impose identities on photographs, I also hope to
simultaneously assert that we can never fix photographic
identities. For photographs defy space and time, and as
Roland Barthes so eloquently exposed through his Camera
Lucida, they belong as much to the past as to the future.7
Photographs are “animated by a social dimension [and] a
dynamic web of exchanges and functions, that gives them
a grounded but never static identity.”8 Therefore, even
when the informational value of an archaeologist’s ‘field’
photographs may appear to us as fixed, their evidential values
are not, because such testimonies bear “not on the object
but on time.”9 Hence, our efforts of restoring meanings
for such photographs can only be over-determined, as it
confines our understanding of them as representations
alone, and keeps our attention only on their imagery.10 This
essay explores aspects of their use, and adds to the many
existing histories of the colonial parenting of archaeology
within British India.
Marshall and Photography
Marshall’s older colleagues, such as Henry Cousens, and
his contemporaries, such as Aurel Stein, were skilled
photographers who left extensive documentations of their
professional engagements with photography, including their
views on the reliability of the available cameras, processes
69. J M
Two Hill Women, Kashmir, c.1903–34
Silver Gelatin Print, 108 x 61 mm
142 Sudeshna Guha 143

parts of the building which are otherwise inaccessible to
the camera.”13 Subsequently, in his formal instructions
on conservation of monuments, Marshall stressed the
necessity of appending “representative photographs”
to all conservation notes to “show the condition of the
monuments from all points of view before its repair is
taken in hand”. He stipulated that all such notes “should
[also] include full particulars (illustrated as a rule by
sketches or scale drawings) of all works such as windows,
doors, railings, roofs, seats or lamps which are to be
restored or newly inserted.”14
To create and collate “complete” records was an essential
aspect of all engineering and building projects undertaken
by the British in India. Photography inevitably fulfilled
the objectives of these ‘total’ documentation schemes,
and Marshall’s instructions, which appeared as Principles
for the Guidance of those Entrusted with Care of Ancient
71. J M
‘Welcome Made by Bodies on 3rd Bridge’,
Srinagar, c. 1910-1920s
Silver Gelatin Print,102 x 152 mm

for developing prints, and methods for numbering, storing,
packing and transporting field photographs.11 That Marshall
was himself a competent photographer is evident from his
personal collection (figs. 67, 70, 71), and it is more than
likely that he deemed photography to be a requisite skill for
an archaeologist.12
Marshall considered photography to be the “cheapest and
most reliable method of reproduction”, and was of the firm
opinion that a monument had to be photographed before
70. J M
River Jhelum at Gulmarg, c.1903–34
Silver Gelatin Print, 114 x 154 mm
it was “touched”. One of his earliest instructions for repairs
of buildings was “to complete a series of photographs of
both the interior and exterior of the building. When
scaffolding is erected care should be taken to photograph
any interesting architectural members or any particular
144
Monuments (1907), were derived from the guidelines set in
the Military Works Handbook that had until then met the
needs of the engineers, builders, architectural historians and
archaeologists. As might be expected, the photographs that
were produced through the conservation of monuments
undertaken during Marshall’s directorship of the Survey
followed the norms of depiction established by the end of
the nineteenth century, including the use of “natives” as
scales (fig. 72).
A late-nineteenth-century example of the ‘conservationist’
effort to provide information, through published
photographs about the condition of a monument before
and after it was repaired is in Alexander Cunningham’s
Tours in the Gangetic Provinces from Badaon to Bihar in 1875
–76 and 1877–78 (1880). Two photographs of the Atala
Masjid at Jaunpur, taken by D. Tresham and Joseph Beglar
respectively, before and after Cunningham had the Masjid
repaired, were published as consecutive plates, 35 and 36.
Through them Cunningham carefully verified the fidelity
of his “new” work, asserting that his restoration was
“a strict repetition of the older portion” of the “highly
decorated propylon.”15 During Marshall’s tenure,
photographs which made up this genre of imagery, i.e.,
displaying the condition of a monument before and after
its restoration, not only accompanied all conservation
notes prepared by his staff, but also appeared in all
volumes of the Survey’s annual reports (figs. 73, 74).
They liberally annotated the very first report (1902–03)
to inform of the archaeological conservations that were
undertaken at the mosques of Sidi Sayyad (Bijapur),
72. A S  I
View from South of Main Gopuram of
Ramasvami Temple, Tadpatri, 1903–04
Silver Gelatin Print, 208 x 151 mm
ASI, DGA’s Collection (Orig. Madras Circle, Neg. No. 576
Photographs in Sir John Marshall’s Archaeology 145
Qila-i-Kuhna (Delhi) and Fathpuri (Agra), the tomb of
Akbar (Sikandra), the temples of Muktesvara and Raja
Rani (Bhubaneshwar), and at Salimgarh (Delhi).16 The
unique genre of imagery, which was created through
such a series and the logic of ‘protection’ embedded
in such framing, not only reified the visual didactics
for archaeological conservation, but also illuminated
the apparent success of Marshall’s principal policy for
Indian archaeology.
Marshall’s Creation:
The DGA’s Photograph Collection
Marshall’s perspective on photography can at best be
speculated upon since the only available sources are his
rare remarks in correspondence and occasional comments
in the Survey reports. However, his direct engagement
with photographs can be gleaned from his creation of a
photographic collection for the Survey.17
Marshall was by no means the first to conceive of a visual
archive of the archaeological surveys of India. This logic
was formally presented in 1869, through the Report by Dr
Forbes Watson on the Illustration of the Archaic Architecture,
&c., of India.18 The vast quantities of photographs that
were collected, catalogued and archived due to the report’s
partial implementation by the colonial administration,
served as ‘documentary records’ of India’s architectural
topography. However, the two seminal archives of visual
material that grew due to the 1869 resolution, one at
London in the India Office, and the other at Calcutta in
the Indian Museum19, were different in character from
the DGA’s collection that Marshall initiated 40 years
later. Unlike the latter, the nineteenth-century archives
were not solely aimed as representatives of the Survey’s
archaeological work.
146 Sudeshna Guha Photographs in Sir John Marshall’s Archaeology 147

73. A S  I 74. A S  I

General View of Akbari Bridge before Removal of General view of Akbari Bridge after Removal of
Modern Additions, Jaunpur, 1915–16 Modern Additions, Jaunpur, 1917–18
Silver Gelatin Print, 153 x 230 mm Silver Gelatin Print, 190 x 285 mm
MAA, P.16326.HRG MAA, P.16327.HRG
148 Photographs in Sir John Marshall’s Archaeology 149

In 1904, Marshall sought an “arrangement with the Trustees

of the Indian Museum” for the transfer of a “large collection
of photographic negatives… stored in the Museum” to his
office at Simla.20 He agreed to maintain this collection at his
official headquarters, and add to it annually. In return for the
negatives he promised the Museum a set of prints mounted
in volumes, which was to serve as a reference collection
on its former holding (fig. 75). The transfer allowed the
development of a historical collection of archaeological
photographs, the DGA’s, which was to remain in its entirety
in India. Reminiscing 35 years later on the ways in which he
established this unique collection, Marshall wrote:

I was luckily able to procure at once some 8000

photo-prints from the negatives then in possession of
the Indian Museum or of our own local branches in
Madras, Bombay and Agra, and to supplement these
by extensive purchases from private firms so that at
the end of a twelvemonth I had already acquired a not
inconsiderable collection. Since then this collection
has been steadily augmented year by year, mainly
by the Department’s own photographs, until it now
numbers some 40,000 prints illustrative of the chief
monuments of note in the country.21

Despite Marshall’s comment, which shows that he was

keen to acquire photographs of historical monuments,
the annually published lists of photo-negatives informs
of the variety of photographs were actually acquired. The
lists differed significantly from those published during the
latter half of the nineteenth century, which had focused on

75. P W D

Jami Masjid, View from South-East, Agra, c.1880s–90s
Silver Gelatin Print, 206 x 287 mm
ASI (Orig. Indian Museum), DGA’s Collection
Neg. No. IMD4 80, Neg. Size 254 x 305 mm
150 Sudeshna Guha
specific subjects.22 The new catalogues of photo-negatives
indicate a change of aims: that of systematic acquisition for
annual archiving of all photographs that emanated from the
archaeological activities undertaken by the Director General’s
office. Information on the DGA’s collection was also
updated through the Annual Report of the Director General
of Archaeology until 1921.23 Along with this Collection, the
provincial circles of the Survey were encouraged to develop
their own photographic collections. All photo-negative lists
published annually until 1936, however, emulated their
nineteenth-century predecessors in one crucial respect: they
provided details of the image and the artefact, and hence not
only of the image and its provenance, but also the size and
processing techniques of the parent negatives.
Although it appears from the Survey’s annual reports that the
stimulus for the establishment of the DGA’s photographic
collection came from Marshall himself, there is a possibility
that the idea of an organised repository of ‘archaeological’
photographs inside the country of their origin may have
preceded his appointment to the Survey.24 A strong motive
and a likely source of inspiration behind Marshall’s requests
to the Indian Museum was the decision of the Council of
the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1898, to establish a depot for
the registration and storage of anthropological photographs
at the Society’s premises in Calcutta.25 It is entirely possible
that the idea of an equivalent collection of ‘archaeological’
photographs emanated from this decision.
Various options for housing the collections were debated.
As most prints and negatives that were collected subsequent
to the 1869 Report for storing in India had made their way
into the Indian Museum, some members of the committee,
such as Herbert Hope Risley, then President of the Asiatic
Society, had hoped that this archive would be allowed to
remain in Calcutta, in the Archaeological Section of the
Museum. However, Marshall’s suggestion (most certainly
backed by Lord Curzon) of taking all the parent negatives
to Simla eventually gained acceptance. It is possible that this
suggestion included considerations in addition to the ones
Marshall tabled to the Committee, namely, that the hot
and humid climate of Calcutta was not conducive for the
long-term storage of photographic material. That Marshall
was also aware of the long-term implications of placing the
archaeological photographs within the Survey’s physical
domain can only remain a speculation, although a highly
probable one.
Encyclopaedic repositories of exchangeable images have
proved to be one of the most enduring creations of colonial
politics.26 And despite remaining well within the boundary
of this politics and its terms for establishing knowledge of
the ‘natives’, Marshall geared the DGA’s collection to meet
an immediate objective of his office – that of increasing its
powers over the control and discharge of archaeological work
throughout India. Within a year of taking up office as head of
a Survey whose existence was until then only sanctioned for
five years, Marshall spelt out his intentions for strengthening
the organisation in no uncertain terms. Pleading for its
retention on a permanent basis, he asserted that:
… I may refer at the outset to the illusory belief to
which expression has often been given that a time
would soon come when the Archaeological Survey
might be disbanded and the work of conservation
if not complete, accomplished through the Public
Works Department. That time has receded further
year by year, and the phantom might now, once and
for all, be laid to rest.27
Eleven years later, as the Director of an institution that was
granted a permanent status, Marshall could back his above
assertions empirically, claiming that “the Government is
satisfied that it cannot look to any other department except the
Archaeological or to any private agency to exercise that expert
supervision and control which is indispensable if the national
monuments of the country are to be adequately preserved.”28
By establishing a photographic archive that invoked the
Survey’s work, Marshall succeeded in leaving for posterity
supposedly ‘truthful’ documents of his own and the Survey’s
archaeological achievements. At the same time, by locating
this archive within the space of his own office, he could
establish an effective and unmediated authority over what
was collected for showcasing the Survey.29
The Uses of the DGA’s Collection
The methods of curating the DGA’s Photographic Collection
can mostly be gleaned from the Survey’s annual reports. The
Collection and the reports were both aimed at eliciting a wider
publicity for the Survey, and Marshall’s injunctions on the type
of visual material he wished collected and archived added to
the objective. Even before the process of the actual acquisition
of photographs for the Collection had begun, he reminded his
readers that “a general check has been put on the preparation
of elaborate Survey drawings, as it was felt that no useful
purpose could be served by [their] accumulation [for] which
there was no immediate prospect of publishing.”30 Unlike his
predecessors, Marshall promoted the functional aspects of
photographs over their aesthetic appeal. While Forbes Watson
had held that an archive of architectural photographs “will
probably constitute the most valuable work on art produced
in the present century”, 31 Marshall was of the opinion that
since some of the “pictorial illustrations, the reproductions,
the plans, and the sketches… have been prepared in England;
some in Madras; and some in other parts of India or Burma;
[they] are to be appraised, therefore, independently according
to their unequal individual qualities, and not viewed as a single
artistic whole.”32
Photographs in Sir John Marshall’s Archaeology 151
Not surprisingly, there are many references for the
pedagogic uses of the Collection, and reproductions for
institutional exchanges with “Archaeology Department and
Societies”, including “in Eastern countries”. For example,
in one instance Marshall reported that 338 and 258 copy
prints were made for the French school at Hanoi, and the
department of archaeology of Java.33 Scholars of India
made frequent requests for reproductions, and one such
by Arthur Macdonell, the Boden Professor of Sanskrit at
Oxford, exemplifies a typical use. Having visited Marshall
in India, where the latter had allowed him to select
photographs of Ajanta, Ellora, Sarnath, etc., Macdonell
asked for a selection of prints to be made from the list of
300 photographs. These, Macdonell wrote to Marshall, had
to be suitable for viewing as lantern-slides, as he envisaged
“lecturing before the British Academy and the Royal
Institution and certainly at Oxford next term on [his]
Indian tour, especially in connection with the antiquities
of the country.”34
We can construe an increase of public consumption of
the Survey’s photographs from the sales figures that are
provided within the annual reports. The steady increase in
sales of photographs of ancient monuments and historic
sites may reflect the rooting of ideas of ‘cultural heritage’
within the Indian milieu, especially among the educated.
Such a proposition is not conjectural, as Marshall reported
increasing interest amongst the Indians towards their
archaeological heritage. He shared his government’s anxiety
to “foster [such an] interest both by encouraging the general
public to visit [the monuments] and by giving special
facilities to professors and their students”; he also observed
that “at present there are many historic monuments which
Europeans find it easier to visit than Indians; but it is
Indians who have primarily to be considered in this matter;
for it is they who necessarily derive the greatest educational
value from them.”35
152 Sudeshna Guha
It is not implausible to suggest that the value with which
many Indians were to hold their archaeologically restored
monuments as “national heirlooms” overrode the missions
of “educating the natives”, the rhetoric of the colonial
government for justifying the vast expenses incurred in
the archaeological restoration projects. To a considerable
extent then, photographs of “preserved” monuments,
“restored” gardens and “cleared” sites formalised links
between archaeology and tourism and added to the making
of such heirlooms36 (fig. 76). By selling photographs to
the public, the Archaeological Survey also earned a small
independent revenue; and in the case of the Taj Mahal, a
“fairly substantial sum” for the upkeep of its gardens was
realised from “licences to vendors for the sale of photographs
and curios.”37
The Memorandum that Marshall wrote in 1954 for the
photographs he donated to the University of Cambridge
(see Appendix A, Part III in this volume) provides a strong
reminder of the devastating repercussions of the Partition of
India in 1947 on the Survey’s collections, both photographic
and objects.38 Meant as a guide to help students and
researchers locate photographs through the numerous
photo-negative lists that were prepared by his Survey until
the 1930s, the note reflects the inevitable dismemberment of
the Survey’s photographic collections that followed the birth
of sovereign India and Pakistan. With respect to photographs
of “the Asoka column in the Deer Park at Sarnath”, Marshall,
perhaps ruefully, wrote:
Sarnath is in the Benaras District of the United
Provinces, and it might be thought that photos of
it would be found in the United Provinces List No.
4. But that list covers only the Moslem monuments,
and the remains at Sarnath are Buddhist. So we have
to turn to two other lists, viz., that of the Director
General (who, incidentally, was responsible for the
Photographs in Sir John Marshall’s Archaeology 153
excavations at Sarnath), and the list No. 3, which
includes the Hindu and Buddhist monuments in
the United Provinces as well as in the Punjab and
Baluchistan. In the latter list will be found […] ten
negatives of the Asoka column, and in the DGA’s list
three. For the former, enquiries will have to be made
of the Director of Archaeology, Karachi, Pakistan; for
the latter, of the Director General in New Delhi.39
There are many photographs within the DGA’s Collection
that clearly demonstrate why the evidential power of a
photograph usually lies within its relationship with “the
beholder, or user”40 rather than within the subject of its
imagery. For instance, even photographs that show no
archaeological activity, through their assimilation within
this archive offered references for the Survey’s seminal work
of listing historical monuments (fig. 77). Considering
that meaningful representations of the ‘archaeological’ are
usually attributed, and not always through fieldwork alone,
the making of collections and archives such as Marshall’s
permitted and facilitated the imposition of identities on
many photographs, routing their social biographies.
Over the next hundred years, and by the middle of the 76. A S  I
Photography in Framing the Science of Excavation nineteenth century, illustrations on aspects of the physical Album Cover for Eighteen Photomechanical Halftone
Reproductions of Restored Monuments at Sanchi,
tasks undertaken within the archaeological field, relating
c.1920s–30s, 135 x 195 mm
The delineation of ‘truthful’ visual inscriptions of the ancient mainly to the clearing of sites and removal of artefacts, had MAA, A46.HRG
ruins and historical monuments has a long history within gained importance for rationalising the destructions caused
antiquarian scholarship. During the eighteenth century, as by archaeological excavations.
scholars focused attention on first-hand studies of phenomena, photographic evidence within its methodology to attest
their reliance on illustrations that could effectively transmit Antiquarian scholarship took recourse to photography’s claims and standards of accuracy that were henceforth to
their own vision grew in scale. In Britain, one of the earliest ‘fidelity of depiction’ in order to make clear distinctions be demanded of excavators. The woodcut published as the
and most comprehensive samples of illustrated ‘facts’ are the between its supposedly scientific excavations and the frontispiece in Nineveh and Its Remains (1873) is an early
drawings made by William Stukeley, the first Secretary of excavations of the ‘booty hunters’. For, it is worth recalling example. One among a series of drawings made on the
the Society of Antiquaries (London), who was of the firm that during the nineteenth century actual excavation spot by Austen Henry Layard, the British archaeologist
opinion that “without drawing or designing the Study of procedures in both cases mostly overlapped, and the and diplomat who excavated the Babylonian city of
Antiquities or any other Science is lame and imperfect.”41 emerging science of archaeology consciously deployed Nineveh between 1845 and 1847, it is clearly meant as
154 Photographs in Sir John Marshall’s Archaeology 155

an illustration of Layard’s methods, of the supposedly

systematic manner in which his workmen lowered the
Assyrian bull42 (fig. 78).

Within the context of nineteenth-century archaeology

of India, and integral to the archaeological plans of
Alexander Cunningham, were the two, and by now rather
well known, quotations printed on the title page each of
the 23 reports of field tours, which he and his assistants
undertook between 1861 and 1885. The first was a phrase
from the Governor General of India Lord Canning’s speech
of January 1862, heralding the objectives of instituting the
Archaeological Survey: “… what is aimed at is an accurate
description, illustrated by plans, measurements, drawings,
or photographs, and by copies of inscriptions, of such
remains as most deserve notice, with the history of them so
far as it may be traceable, and a record of the traditions that
are preserved regarding them”. This was placed above the
declaration, in 1838, by James Prinsep (by then a renowned
Sanskritist and Secretary of the Asiatic Society of Bengal)
that “… what the learned world demands of us in India is
to be quite certain of our data, to place the monumental
record before them exactly as it now exists, and to interpret
it faithfully and literally”.

When read together, as they were meant to be, the quotations

draw our attention not only to the emphasis that was
placed on seeking historical truths through archaeological
investigations, but also to the accurate visual presentation of
such field surveys. With respect to procedures on excavations,
especially while they were in progress, many antiquarians
and administrator-scholars, such as Robert Sewell who

77. F B

Surya Temple, Martand, c.1900–10
Silver Gelatin Print, 201 x 265 mm
156 Sudeshna Guha
excavated the “tope” of Amaravati in 1877, felt the need for
the presence of both draughtsmen and photographers “on
the spot” – the “one to take measurements, and mark the
position of every marble as it comes to light; the other to
stamp in permanence the general progress of the work in all
its different stages.”43
The maxim “to dig is to destroy” was well-known to the
excavators of the late nineteenth century, and the merits of
justifying the destructive activity through photography was
best articulated by General Augustus Lane Fox Pitt Rivers, the
British archaeologist, antiquarian and ethnologist. Between
1880 and 1895, Pitt Rivers transformed the pleasant hobby
of barrow digging into a “scientific” pursuit, through his
78. A H L
“The Assyrian Bulls at Nineveh, 1845–47”
Woodcut from Drawing, Frontispiece in A.H. Layard,
Nineveh and its Remains. A Narrative of an Expedition
to Assyria (1873)
Excavations in Cranborne Chase. In his lavish five-volumed
reports, he not only included detailed contour maps,
drawings and lithographs of the mounds and artefacts that
his workers unearthed, but also photographs of the actual
spadework, and of every object and skeleton they found in
situ. What assumes significance when noted is that Pitt Rivers
chose to ignore the numerous mediations through which he
achieved photographic evidence of his ostensibly accurate
digging methods. His reliance on photography to visually
establish the systematic science of excavation secured roots
within India under the tutelage of Mortimer Wheeler, his
ardent follower and one of Marshall’s flamboyant successors
within the colonial Survey (1944–48).44
Excavation Imagery: Marshall and Wheeler
By the late nineteenth century, the need to proceed beyond
the prospecting of sites and the rifling of stupas,45 and for
discarding the “disastrous [excavation] methods of Cole,
Cunningham, Caddy and Beglar,”46 was acutely felt by
those who undertook archaeological investigations within
India. As Marshall himself pointed out in many places,
one of the reasons why his candidature to head the Survey
was successful was his personal experience of excavations.47
Because of his participation in the excavations at Crete in
1901, Marshall was judged as someone who could bring
into India the innovative techniques being developed within
the Western world.48 Hence there were expectations that
Marshall’s office would begin to initiate formal procedures,
including methodologies, to establish protocols that would
considerably improve the quality of excavation work
undertaken within Indian archaeology.
Apart from Taxila, which faced the longest duration of
Marshall’s spadework and where he was of the view that this
work could “go on for a century or more,”49 and Sanchi,
Marshall did not personally excavate anywhere for more
than one or (in the case of Sarnath) two seasons. This is
true even of Mohenjodaro, which in posterity is very often
mistaken as Marshall’s excavation.50 Marshall’s presence at
Charsada, his very first excavation, was for less than a month.
In his subsequent excavations at Sarnath, Rajgir, Saheth
Maheth, Bhita and Nalanda, he was physically present
for even shorter periods of time. Consequently, his direct
authority on the excavation techniques was very different
Photographs in Sir John Marshall’s Archaeology 157
in tenor from Wheeler’s, whose personal participation in
the five excavations he undertook during his short official
career in Indian archaeology is unique within the annals
of the colonial Survey. Unlike Wheeler, Marshall issued
no didactic memoranda on excavation techniques. The
‘benchmarks’ for registering the relative chronology of a site
and pottery sorting, which Marshall introduced within his
own excavations, are rarely documented photographically,
and there is an apparent lack of any visible genre of imagery
that emerged through the excavations that were undertaken
during his tenure.
Marshall’s excavation methods were subsequently criticised
by Wheeler as reflecting the “standards [that] remained…
substantially those of Greece and Near East in 1900.”51
Supposedly to amend his predecessor’s flaws, Wheeler set up
his first archaeological training school in India at Taxila, a
site which by then was regarded as Marshall’s archaeological
triumph. In addition, Wheeler publicised his own “scientific”
excavations by, among other means, creating visual contrasts
between his excavations and those that were conducted
during and following Marshall’s directorship of the Survey.
Two explicit examples are the photographs Wheeler placed
one above the other as Plates 4a and 4b in his Archaeology
from the Earth (1956). The former, from Ernest Mackay’s
excavations at Chanhudaro in 1935–36, he captioned
“chaos”; while the latter, taken during his own excavations
at Arikamedu in 1946, he differentiated as “discipline.”52
Emulating his mentor Pitt Rivers, Wheeler etched what he
felt was his own superior contribution to Indian archaeology
rather effectively and quite unambiguously through such
uses of photographs.
On comparing photographs of Marshall’s and Wheeler’s
respective excavations at Taxila, the differences in the respective
imagery can indeed be noted. Those created by Marshall’s
photographers rarely show the actual work of clearing,
158 Sudeshna Guha Photographs in Sir John Marshall’s Archaeology 159

79. A S  I 80. M.B. C  ASI

Bhir Mound from Southeast, Taxila, 1920–21 General View of Excavations, Bhir Mound (BMIV),
Silver Gelatin Print, 146 x 199 mm Taxila, 1944–45
Silver Gelatin Print, 160 x 210 mm
Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Cambridge
160 Sudeshna Guha
81. A S  I
Captioned “An example of superimposed walls of the first,
second and third strata. Observe the break between the third
and second strata”, Taxila, 1912–13, in J.H. Marshall,
Taxila: An Illustrated Account of Archaeological Excavations
(1951), Plate Va.
digging and sorting, and often bear few visual indicators that
help our eye in distinguishing the stratigraphic breaks or the
chronological ‘levels’ that were reached during the excavations
(figs. 79, 81). In contrast, the photographs from Wheeler’s
excavations highlight his precise methodology (figs. 80, 82).
However, constructs of an ‘evolving’ genre of excavation
imagery are often contingent on what we fix as representative
samples. By arranging selections of excavation photographs
taken during Marshall’s term in the Survey, it is equally
possible to create a narrative of the gradual elimination
of pictorial “chaos” from the overall imagery, over the
two decades he was in office. For instance, a comparison
of figs. 83 and 84 would suggest that photographs taken
during the Survey’s excavations in the 1920s present
a ‘cleaner’ composition than those taken earlier. The
photograph from Mohenjodaro was clearly perceived as
evidence of methodical work, an opinion revealed in a
series of correspondence between Harold Hargreaves, then
Archaeological Superintendent, Frontier Circle, and R.B.
Seymour Sewell, Director General of the Zoological Survey
of India.53 Letters between the two relate to the finds of
skeletal material from the HR area at Mohenjodaro,
excavated by Hargreaves in 1925–26. Sewell complained
to Hargreaves that the bones sent to him for analysis were
found broken when they were unpacked in his office at
Calcutta, emphasising that:
I wrote to Sir John Marshall sometime ago begging
him to use modern methods in excavating these
bones and to have them properly treated with shellac
dissolved in alcohol as soon as they are uncovered […]
the bones have been sent untreated in any anyway;
long bones, such as thigh bones have been merely
wrapped round in a piece of newspaper and have been
packed, along with many others in a box, with the
result that the bones arrived here are broken into a
thousand fragments which it is perfectly impossible
to piece together.54
To assure him of the discipline with which the work was
undertaken, Hargreaves sought refuge within photographic
evidence, asserting that “… when you see the photographs
Photographs in Sir John Marshall’s Archaeology 161
which I am sending separately, you will agree that they
were at least excavated carefully.”55 He sent Sewell eight
photographs to prove his point, among them the one
reproduced here as fig. 85.
Unlike Wheeler, Marshall did not make explicit claims
on photographs to justify the quality of his excavation
methods. However, his occasional references to what
photography could achieve reveals the extent to which he
was aware of the power of photographic expression. With
reference to the Buddhist “religious foundations… outside
the cities” in Taxila, he had remarked that they “present
us with a graphic picture, or perhaps I should rather say
film, of the development of Buddhism during a most
critical period of its history, from the first century B.C.
to the fifth century AD.”56 Marshall’s use of photographs
from Harappa and Mohenjodaro reveals that he too, like
Wheeler, used photographs for creating perspectives on
archaeological evidence.
Imaging the Indus Civilisation
The preliminary excavations at Harappa and Mohenjodaro
between 1921 and 192357 offered Marshall some of his finest
moments of glory, and he could confidently proclaim that
“no such epoch-making discoveries [had] ever fallen to the 82. M.B. C  ASI
Bhir Mound, Platform, No.1, East of Central Pillar,
lot of an Archaeologist in this country.”58 The excavations
Taxila, 1944–45
unearthed a sophisticated, “urban”, “pre-historic” society,
Silver Gelatin Print, 160 x 110 mm
and Marshall’s “Indus Civilisation”59 pushed back the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Cambridge
antiquity of South Asia’s civilisational history by more
than a thousand years. The photographs taken during the
excavations substantiated the archaeological evidence for Not only was the archaeological discovery of the Indus
cultural links between the people of the Indus Valley and Civilisation of seminal value for Western scholars and
their contemporaries in West Asia, and Marshall himself specialists uncovering the “prehistory” of India,61 it held equal
triggered their move as creators of archaeological evidence importance for Indians by exposing their long and unique
through his publication in The Illustrated London News.60 civilisational history. The heightened sense of national pride
162 Sudeshna Guha Photographs in Sir John Marshall’s Archaeology 163

Facing page Above

83. F O 84. A S  I
View of Excavations West of the Main Buddhist Two Flights of Steps Leading into Courtyard
Shrine, Sarnath, Showing Lion Capital of Ashokan Pillar with Well, HR Area, Mohenjodaro, 1925–26
Found in March 1905 Silver Gelatin Print, 210 x 280 mm
Silver Gelatin Print, 163 x 215 mm MAA, P.16175.HRG
MAA, P.44599.ORT
164 Photographs in Sir John Marshall’s Archaeology 165

heralded by the archaeological exposé was aptly expressed

with rhetorical intensity in the Amrita Bazar Patrika (1
January 1925):

What Indian is there who will not feel proud that

the civilisation of his country thus reaches up to
the hoary age of the third or the fourth millennium
B.C.? He must therefore fully sympathise with the
Archaeological Department that is now carrying on
a vigorous campaign in the Press to win popular help
and support for further excavations in the Indus Valley
which at present seems limitless. We therefore stoutly
maintain that the systematic excavation of these sites
is not simply of provincial but of national importance
and urge the Government of India to spare no money
until this object is fully realised.

That Marshall was well aware of the extent to which the

archaeological discoveries had reinforced the national pride
of Indians is clear from his own remarks. Reproaching his
government for curbing financial assistance for archaeological
work, Marshall justly observed that “… it is hardly to be
imagined that money will be denied to an undertaking which
has already appealed so powerfully to the national sentiment
of India, and which seems likely to revolutionise our ideas
of the cultural development of man in the Middle and the
Nearer East.”62 While weighing the benefits and problems
of allowing American and other “outside co-operations to
conduct archaeological explorations” within India with
his department, Marshall, who was then himself in favour
of seeking foreign investments for archaeological work,
was also realistic enough to know that “the Indians might

85. A S  I

Skeletons Found in HR Area, Mohenjodaro, 1925–26
Silver Gelatin Print, 220 x 283 mm
MAA, P.16220.HRG
166 Sudeshna Guha
legitimately resent the idea of this essentially national work
being delegated to foreigners.”63
Yet, Marshall chose to ignore the pulse of Indian nationalism
by courting The Illustrated London News, where he first
published his preliminary views on the Indus Civilisation.
He was consequently questioned in the Council of States on
21 January 1925 by Khan Bahadur Ebrahim Haroon Jaffer64
about his motives for releasing information publicly through
a foreign, rather than the Indian press, and asked whether it
was a fact that the “Archaeology Department had refused to
provide local papers with copies of photographs which were
first published in England, even though the Indian papers had
offered to pay for them.”65 As photographs of excavations are
not often subjects of legislative enquiries, Jaffer’s interrogation
of Marshall remains a rare historical episode.
With respect to Jaffer’s enquiries, in particular of any
government rules that allowed Marshall to give preference
to ‘foreign’ newspapers over the Indian ones, Marshall
categorically stated that he did not know, and that had such
a rule existed he would have asked for it to be set aside. He
defended his actions by invoking the cause of scholarship,
and announced that by publishing in The Illustrated London
News, he had brought the discoveries to the notice of
“archaeologists in England and other countries and [had]
thus [been able to receive] help from outside in determining
their age and cultural affinities.”66 Marshall also denied any
personal knowledge of requests, which his office may have
received from the Indian papers. For, as he said, “had there
been any sent to a local officer, it was doubtless refused
in accordance with the standing orders which required
archaeological materials to be published in our official
reports unless permission to the contrary is given.”67
Marshall’s subsequent questioning of Rakhaldas Banerji and
Madho Sarup Vats, the excavators of Mohenjodaro during
1922–23 and 1923–24 respectively, who had responded
to enquiries from a few leading Indian newspapers, is
one example among many of the official hierarchy he had
successfully established within the Survey by then.68 What
comes across clearly through Marshall’s defense of his own
position is that although he had expected his officers to
abide by the rules of the Government of India, he saw his
own rights for seeking remission as a prerogative of his
superior official status.
The unearthing of the Indus Civilisation coincides with a
series of remarkable archaeological finds on aspects of early
civilisations from the Near East. Of the most notable were
the Egyptian King Tutankhamen’s tomb (1921), the city
of Ur, supposedly the Biblical city of the Chaldees (1922),
and the library of cuneiform tablets at Kish (1923). The
Illustrated London News romanticised and sensationalised
these discoveries as great archaeological feats. The journal,
established in 1842, had by the 1920s acquired a formidable
reputation for its coverage on archaeological matters, and
held exclusive rights for the publication of photographs
from many of these excavations.69 Through illustrations,
and primarily through photographs and lithographs, it
offered readers a variety of imaginative tours, including
conjectured ceremonies of the ancient world. One such
pictorial creation, through information supplied by none
other than, the renowned Egyptologist and archaeologist
Flinders Petrie, was of the “Last rites in a pharaoh’s funeral:
The mummy held upright by a priest personifying the
jackal headed Anubis, while another performs the ‘opening
of the mouth’ ceremony.”70
Marshall may have hoped that by publishing within The
Illustrated London News he could attract international
attention for the Indus Civilisation, for he began his article
on an uncharacteristically dramatic note: “Not often has
it been to archaeologists, as it was given to Schleimann at
Tiryns and Mycenae, or to Stein in the deserts of Turkestan,
to light upon the remains of a long forgotten civilization.”71
Photographs from the excavations of Harappa and
Mohenjodaro, albeit a selection, were first made public
through this article. They were lavishly reproduced as “An
Indian ‘Tiryns’ and ‘Mycenae’: A Forgotten Age Revealed”;
“‘Modern’ Refinements in Ancient India: Arts and Crafts
of a Newly Discovered Prehistoric Race”; and “Unknown
Indian Picture-Writing: A New Problem in Palaeography”.
Captioned with long texts, the illustrated pages presented
the archaeological finds in the manner the journal was
reputed for, an eye-catching account (fig. 86).
Within days of the appearance of Marshall’s “First Light
on a Long-Forgotten Civilisation: New Discoveries of an
Unknown Prehistoric Past in India”, Archibald Sayce, the
reputed Assyriologist at Merton College, Oxford, wrote to
the editors to propose “cultural intercourse” between the
contemporary civilisations of Indus and Susa.72 Sayce’s
views were strongly endorsed by Cyril Gadd and Sydney
Smith, then in the Egyptian and Antiquity Department
of the British Museum, through their article titled “‘New
Links Between Indian and Babylonian Civilisations”,
which appeared in the issue of 4 October 1924. Sayce’s
letter and Gadd and Smith’s article elucidates the manner
in which photographs from Harappa and Mohenjodaro,
whose circulation within India Marshall had withheld until
mid-1924, riveted the direction of intellectual enquiry on
the Indus Civilisation.
Sayce had drawn attention to the similarities he had noted
between “the proto-Elamite ‘tablettes de compatabilite’
from Susa”, of which he knew through his own research,
and the seals from Harappa and Mohenjodaro, which he
saw in the photographs accompanying Marshall’s article; he
had inferred that “the identity is such that [they] might have
come from the same hand.”73 Gadd and Smith grounded
Photographs in Sir John Marshall’s Archaeology 167
Sayce’s inference empirically by pointing out, through the
photographs, similarities between groups of objects from Al
Ubaid, Susa, Harappa and Mohenjodaro. The objects they
selected for comparison were the seals with bull motifs, hollow
tubular cylinders of haematite, inscriptional characters,
and buildings of bricks with drainage. By proposing that
the people who made these at Mohenjodaro and Harappa
were in close contact with the Sumerians between 3000
and 2800 BC, they established a hypothesis, the first of
its kind, on “external” contacts between the inhabitants of
the Greater Indus Valley and those of West Asia during the
second millennium BC.74 It is rather significant that Gadd
and Smith based this hypothesis through a comparison of
the published photographs, with the observation that “the
close resemblance of the objects from Mohenjo-Daro and
Harappa in the Indus valley… to Babylonian antiquities…
is very striking when pictures of various classes of object are
seen side by side.”75
The speed at which excavated objects were transformed
into archaeological ‘facts’ through Marshall’s publication
of the photographs is also apparent in his own narrative
on the discovery of a seal from Kish. In a semi-official
correspondence, Marshall mentioned of “a further
communication” that had reached him from “the Director
of the American Expedition at Tell Ahaimir (Kish) in
Mesopotamia, which confirms the conclusions arrived by the
Sumerian experts of the British Museum (which he himself
had not yet seen)”. Marshall quoted this correspondence at
length in the Survey’s annual report, mentioning that “close
to the Ziggurat of Tell Ahaimir, in the foundation debris of
a chamber dating from the time of Hamurabi, he tells me
that he recently found a seal identical in all respects with
those found at Harappa (which he had seen reproduced
in my article in The Illustrated London News).”76 This
letter, which Marshall received from Ernest Mackay (who
later excavated Mohenjodaro from 1927–31)77 not only
168 Sudeshna Guha 169

Facing page
87. The Illustrated London News, 10 October 1924, p. 615. 86. The Illustrated London News, 24 September 1924, pp. 530–31.
170 Sudeshna Guha
points to the circulation of photographs as currencies of
information, but also that such uses precipitate the making
of archaeological evidence and its validation as a form of
irrefutable historical truth.
To cite just one example, the two photographic displays
that accompanied Gadd and Smith’s article and were
aimed as evidence for their views, show the ways in which
archaeological finds are often assured as “archaeological
facts” (for example, fig. 87). The authors had declared: “…
on looking at the pictures of the Indian excavations... one
involuntarily calls to mind the pictures of Dr. Hall and
Mr. Woolley’s excavations at Ur of the Chaldees, already
published in The Illustrated London News.”78 As their
declaration foretells, the displays were created through
a selection of photographs, from Ur, Al Ubaid, Susa,
Mohenjodaro and Harappa – all of which had been published
previously within the journal. By cropping the published
photographs, as well as selecting motifs from their overall
visual scheme,79 similar objects of similar dimensions were
placed next to each other to design a collage that was then
re-photographed for publication. The illustrated pages thus
met the authors’ intentions of enabling their “readers to
trace the interesting comparison[s].”80
It is obvious that for Gadd and Smith, the published
photographs were replicas of the actual material object.
However, by endowing dissimilar photographs of different
artefacts from dissimilar sites and geographical areas with
equivalent values,81 they could impose upon them an added
value, that of photographic evidence for “a new historical
vista” on the “early Indian and Babylonian kinship.”82 It is
only by fixing this truth value of equivalency, which allowed
the typification of different photographs as similar objects,
could Gadd and Smith impress upon their readers the
possible truth of their hypothesis. As with Page’s inscribed
note on the photograph of the Qutb, the photographic
displays that illustrated their hypothesis also resonates on the
relationship between the evidential power of photographs
and our expectations from their performance.
Representations and Perception
The photographic displays of Gadd’s and Smith’s theories
highlight the paradox that is inherent in our engagements
with photographs. Guided by our faith in the similitude
between an image and its referent, we endow photographs
with referential, and, thereby truth, values. Although, as
the making of the displays amply expose, by doing so we
add to the slippage between a photograph and its referent.
For, the displays clearly show that by placing photographs
in certain relationships we provide them with contexts and
initiate our own interpretive processes. Hence, we often
fix photographs within discourses of our own making,
and, as some historians of photography would wish us to
acknowledge, we inevitably attribute to them “the kind of
meanings we imagine they should give.”83
Although archaeologists from Marshall’s time to this day have
often perceived field photographs as unmediated references
of the excavated world, it is rather useful to explore some
of the ways in which they impose upon the reality they
claim discovery of. To ‘see’ Mohenjodaro, Marshall had to
jog his memory back to something he was familiar with –
the impoverished mill towns of north England with their
massive and bleak industrial architecture. Within the official
excavation report he remarked unambiguously that “anyone
walking for the first time [through] the wide expanse of bare
red brick structures at Mohenjodaro”, which is “devoid of any
semblance of ornament, and bearing in the feature the mark
of stark utilitarianism might fancy himself surrounded by
the ruins of some present day working town in Lancashire.”84
Adeptly supporting this rumination, which we may dismiss
as subjective and whimsical, is the photograph of one of
Marshall’s Indian superintendents, in the garb of an “English
man” walking on Mohenjodaro’s “First” street (fig. 88). This
photograph failed to make its appearance in the official
excavation report, Mohenjodaro and the Indus Civilisation,
perhaps due to its eloquent mesh of ironies – one of the
many frames through which Marshall and his colleagues
could interpret the past they “uncovered” through their
excavations.
Within popular perceptions, the discipline of archaeology
shares much common ground with photography, and not
only because the one is represented by the other. Both are held
capable of providing unmediated accounts, of capturing data
supposedly out there, and for cultivating notions that their
techniques are truth-making. Both have also been of immense
value to the politics of colonialism as well as nationalism
during the twentieth century. Yet, during the same century,
the archaeological making of the Indus Civilisation has
shown very clearly that the archaeological record is neither
self-revelatory, nor fixed in definitions. Over the last 80 years,
fresh meanings have been imposed on Marshall’s finds, new
definitions have transformed the archaeological entities he
considered empirically established, and much new evidence
has been created with the same artefacts which he and his
colleagues had unearthed. The excavated record and its
supposedly representational photographs have both proved
to be infinitely recodable.
Similar to the excavations at Harappa and Mohenjodaro
eighty years ago, the Archaeological Survey’s excavations
at Ayodhya, undertaken between April and September
2003, has brought the organisation once more into the
Photographs in Sir John Marshall’s Archaeology 171
glare of international publicity – this time, however, for the
notoriety they attracted. By maintaining that the excavations
were conducted in a “scientific” manner, the excavators
attempted to contain the opprobrium that justly followed.
Through interpretations of the excavated finds, and by
using photographs as virtual witnesses,85 they argued for the
reality of their versions of ‘Hindu’ histories under the Babri
Masjid, the Mughal mosque which they wilfully destroyed.
Not surprisingly, the ways in which the excavated objects
were identified through modern Hindu religious symbols
held no significance in excavators’ versions of how they had
established the archaeological evidence.
The superiority of archaeological evidence over other kinds,
which those who historicise the Babri Masjid’s foundations
with a ‘Ram Mandir’ belabour upon, is crafted through
the faith that a scientific practice necessarily excavates
historical truths. A foray into visual histories, however,
reveals the many limitations and flaws of the empiricism
of positivist science. Photographs provoke us to question
the stability of the object of our enquiry and to attend to
the contingencies and encounters through which we shape
archaeological knowledge. Emulating the lead given by
its precursor, the science of antiquarianism, the modern
professional science of archaeology consciously deployed
the language of witnessing and visual observation as a means
of defending its account of past realities. Yet biographies
of photographs used as archaeological representations,
such as those of Harappa and Mohenjodaro, reveal that
even the ‘hard’ evidence of surface appearances that
archaeological fieldwork claims an unmediated discovery
of, is in fact established through countless moments of
subjective encounters.
172 Photographs in Sir John Marshall’s Archaeology 173

88. A S  I

Captioned “View of ‘First Street’ in HR Area,
Mohenjodaro”, 1926–27
Silver Gelatin Print, 200 x 280 mm
MAA, P.15590.HRG
174 Sudeshna Guha
Notes
1
J.A. Page. “The Historical Memoirs on the Qutb: Delhi”. In Memoirs
of the Archaeological Survey of India, No. 22 (Calcutta: Government of
India, 1926). Page was appointed Superintendent Archaeologist in charge
of Mohammedan and Buddhist monuments, Northern Circle, to fill the
vacancy created by Gordon Sanderson’s death, in 1916. Sanderson had
initiated the work of clearance and restoration within the Qutb complex
in 1911, and had supervised the work until he joined the army in 1914.
2
I am not suggesting that photographs entirely replaced all other forms
of visual documents. Their power as virtual witnesses emanated (and
still does) from their indexical properties, which were derived from two
expectations from the technology: its mechanical accuracy and optical
precision. As suggested evocatively by G. Batchen: “On this basis,
photographs are able to parade themselves as the world’s own chemical
fingerprints, nature’s poignant rendition of herself as a memento mori”
(Each Wild Idea, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002, p. 61).
3
See W.M. Petrie, Methods and Aims in Archaeology (London: Macmillan
and Co., 1904). This is the first comprehensive overview of the principles
and practice of archaeology. Petrie saw archaeology as “the latest born of
the sciences”, and began his chapter on photographing for archaeological
purposes with the observation that “the bane of practical photography is
the rich amateur, who insists on useless luxury of apparatus, and has set a
fashion in fittings which is absurdly complex” (p. vii, also p. 73).
4
See A. Watson, “Making Space for Monuments: Notes on the
Representation of Experience” in C. Renfrew, C. Gosden and E. DeMarrais
(eds.), Substance, Memory, Display: Archaeology and Art (Cambridge:
Macdonald Institute of Archaeological Research, 2004), pp. 79–96, at
p. 95. For integrating the visual, including the sensory world of arts,
within parameters of archaeological research, see B.L. Molyneaux (ed.),
The Cultural Life of Images: Visual Representation in Archaeology (London:
Routledge, 1997); Y. Hamilakis, “Monumental Visions: Bonfils, Classical
Antiquity and Nineteenth-Century Athenian Society” in History of
Photography, Vol. 25, No. 1, 2001, pp. 5–12, 23–43; C. Renfrew, Figuring
It Out: The Parallel Visions of Artists and Archaeologists (London: Thames
& Hudson, 2003); J. Fejfer, T. Fischer-Hansen and A. Rathje (eds.), The
Rediscovery of Antiquity: The Role of the Artist (University of Copenhagen:
Museum Tusculanum Press, 2003); N. Brodie and C. Hills (eds.), Material
Engagements: Studies in Honour of Colin Renfrew (Cambridge: Macdonald
Institute for Archaeological Research, 2004); and C. Renfrew, C. Gosden
and E. DeMarrais (eds.), 2004, op. cit. This comparatively recent focus
on the visual and visualisation draws its inspirations from the growing
research on material culture. See D. Miller (ed.), Material Cultures: Why
Some Things Matter (London: University College Press, 1997), and V.
Buchli, “Introduction” in V. Buchli (ed.), The Material Culture Reader
(Oxford and New York: Berg, 2002), pp. 1–22, for references to directions
of enquiry on the latter.
5
My reference to the term is from Deborah Poole, Vision, Race and
Modernity: A Visual Economy of the Andean Image World (Princeton and
Chicester: Princeton University Press, 1997). Poole describes this as
the social, political, economic and ideological matrices within which
photographs operate and which shape their production, circulation,
consumption and possession. By examining the relationships between
photography, intellectual formations and aesthetic projects that took
shape in and around the Andean cultures, Poole was able to show that
in order to understand the roles of visual discourses and images we need
to understand the material and social construction of vision, and explore
the uses of photographs as objects. See also E. Edwards, “Material Beings:
Objecthood and Ethnographic Photographs” in Visual Studies, Vol. 17,
No. 1, 2002, pp. 65–75.
6
See Poole’s “An Excess of Description: Ethnography, Race and Visual
Technologies” in Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 34, 2005, pp. 59–
179, at p. 173.
7
R. Barthes (1980). Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. Trans. R.
Howard. Reading: Vintage, 2000.
8
G. Batchen (2001), op. cit. (note 2) Each Wild Idea. Cambridge, Mass.:
MIT Press, 2002, p. 78. See also E. Edwards, “Some Thoughts on
Photographs as History” in C. Harris and T. Shakya (eds.), Seeing Lhasa,
Exhibition Catalogue (Chicago: Serindia, 2003), pp. 127–39, at p. 130.
9
Barthes 2000, op. cit., p. 89.
10
Considering that a photographic image may often have many different
physical forms, for example as lantern slides, ‘duplicate’ prints, and
negatives, individual photographs with the same image may have many
different social biographies, and hence many original contexts. These
multiply in our engagement with photographs, particularly when we
impose different meanings to the different material types by evaluating
them differently, and shift the premise of our enquiries.
11
For example, while instructing F.H. Andrews on how his photographs from
Herat were to be developed, Aurel Stein wrote that “there are five tin boxes
in all, full of developed half and quarter plate negatives… in each box there
are four tins, each of which contains (roughly) either three dozens of half
plates, or six dozens of quarter plates. The negative boxes all bear dates and
should be numbered and printed in chronological order… they should be
numbered only on the outer blank edge in ink, and with white on black.
For safety’s sake the numbers should be written also on the back of prints,
in soft pencil… the prints should not be trimmed in any way so as always
to show number on the blank edge”. Letter dated 4 December 1914, Stein
Collection, Manuscript 43, Bodleian Library, Oxford.
12
Notes on the Operations and Future Conduct of the Archaeological Survey,
29 March 1903, File 142, Serial No. 1, Survey Archives. On assuming
office, Marshall’s first request was for the purchase of drawing instruments
and a camera, and he was sanctioned Rs. 500 to purchase the latter
“of English manufacture”. See “Request of the Director General for
Archaeology for Photo Apparatus and Drawing Instruments” in Proceedings
of Revenue and Agriculture Department, Archaeology and Epigraphy,
24 March 1902, File 30, Part A.
13
Memorandum on the Restoration of the Tower of Fame, Chittor, Rajputana,
File 79, Serial Nos. 1–25, 1902, and Memorandum on the Measures of
Repair and Restoration of the Buildings in the Punjab, File No. 129, Serial
No. 1, November 1902, Survey Archives. With respect to photographing
the Kirti Stambha at Chittor during repairs executed by the Mewar
Darbar, Cousens in the formal capacity of advisor instructed that “before
further dismantling was done, good photographs should be taken of each
face, from which enlargements could be made”. See H. Cousens, “The
Restoration of the Jaina Tower of Chitorgadh” in Annual Report of the
Archaeological Survey of India 1905–06 (Part II) (Calcutta: Office of the
Superintendent Government Printing, 1909), pp. 43–49, at p. 46.
14
J.H. Marshall. Conservation Manual: A Handbook for the Use of
Archaeological Officers and Others Entrusted with the Care of Ancient
Monuments. Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1923, p. 8.
15
See A. Cunningham, Report of Tours in the Gangetic Provinces from Badaon
to Bihar in 1875–76 and 1877–78, Vol. 11. Calcutta: Superintendent
Government Printing, 1880, p. 108.
16
Annual Report of the Archaeological Survey of India 1902–03, plates Va and
Vb, XIa and XIb, XIIa and XIIb, XIVa and XIVb, XVa and XVb.
17
J.H. Marshall. Annual Report of the Archaeological Survey of India 1911–
12. Part I. Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1914, p. 52.
18
The report, which preceded the reinstitution of the Survey, by two years,
was made up of seven appendices, three authored by James Fergusson
and one each by Alexander Cunningham and Philip Meadows Taylor.
Their recommendations regarding what was to be preserved, documented
and explored of India’s ruins followed the ‘Resolution’ of the Governor
General in Council (passed on 9 December 1867 and cited in Sir
Stafford Northcote’s public dispatch No. 165) on the representation and
conservation of India’s ancient monuments (Home/Public 30 July 1870,
Nos. 204–16, Part A). As a means of facilitating the implementation of
the 1869 report, the Government of India, asked provincial governments
to prepare lists of photographs accompanied by plans and descriptions,
of all buildings they considered to be of historical importance within
their jurisdiction.
19
Forbes Watson was clear on the need for separate archives, one in Britain
and others in India. He explicitly stated: “[…] in the first place, then, it
is desirable that copies of the whole of the photographs, plan, sections,
&c., should be taken in duplicate, one set to be retained in India, and the
other forwarded to this country. The negatives for the reasons given in the
Despatch of the Secretary of State of 9th December 1867, should in all
cases be sent with the photographs to this Office.” See J. Forbes Watson,
Report by Dr Forbes Watson on the Illustration of the Archaic Architecture,
&c., of India (London: India Museum 1869), p. 5.
20
Marshall 1914, op. cit., p. 52.
21
J.H. Marshall. “The Story of the Archaeological Department in India”.
In J. Cumming (ed.), Revealing India’s Past (London: The India Society,
1939), pp. 1–33, at p. 31.
22
Examples of such lists are: Ancient Buildings and Antiquities of the Bombay
Presidency (H. Cousens, 1887); Monumental Antiquities and Inscriptions in
the North-Western Provinces and Oudh (A. Fuhrer, 1889); Ancient Buildings
Photographs in Sir John Marshall’s Archaeology 175
and Antiquities in the Imperial Museum, Calcutta (J.W. Mason and J.D.
Beglar, 1890); Antiquities Belonging to the India Office (A. Rea, 1894);
and the master list prepared by Theodore Bloch in 1900, of photographic
negatives of Indian antiquities in the collections of the Indian Museum
and the India Office. For publication details, see Annual Report of
the Archaeological Survey of India 1911–12, Appendix, pp. 199–227,
(Calcutta: Government of India Printing, 1915).
23
After 1921 this special edition, commonly referred to as Part I of the
Survey’s annual reports, was discontinued. Details of the photographs
prepared by the DGA’s office are also provided in List of Archaeological
Photo-Negatives, Parts I and II, Corrected upto the 31st March 1935, Stored
in the Office of the Director General of Archaeology in India, Simla (Delhi:
Manager of Publications Press, 1936). The provincial lists were corrected
and augmented until 1936.
24
Formation of a Photographic Record in India, May 1904, File 75, Serial
No. 1, Survey Archives. The file includes correspondence between Denzil
Ibbetson, John Wilson, then Secretary to the Viceroy, Risley, Marshall and
G.P. Symes Scutt, Vice President of the Photographic Society of India.
25
The Society’s decision followed the call of the British Association of the
Advancement of Science for the “Collection, Preservation and Systematic
Registration of Photographs of Anthropological Interest”. Ibid.
26
The ‘ethnographic’ archives of photographs are rather well known by
now. See J. Falconer, “Ethnological Photography in India, 1850–1900”
in Photographic Collector, Vol. 5, No.1, 1984, pp. 16–45. See C. Pinney,
“Classification and Fantasy in the Photographic Construction of Caste
and Tribe” in Visual Anthropology, Vol. 3, 1990, pp. 259–88, for two early
references on photographing for ethnological purposes in India. See M.H.
Edney, Mapping an Empire: The Geographical Construction of British India,
1765–1843 (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1997) for
archives that were instituted well before the Raj, on the geographical and
revenue surveys of India.
27
As stated in an official note on 18 April 1904, to the Secretary of State on
26 May 1904, Proceedings of Revenue and Agriculture Department, A&E,
June 1904. See also A. Ghosh, “Fifty Years of the Archaeological Survey of
India” in Ancient India, Vol. 9, pp. 29–53, at pp. 33–34.
28
J.H. Marshall. Indian Archaeological Policy: Being a Resolution Issued by
the Governor General in Council on the 22nd October 1915. Calcutta:
Superintendent Government Printing, 1916, p. 21.
29
It was during Marshall’s directorship of the Survey that keeping records
in-house was made integral to its administrative responsibilities.
30
J.H. Marshall. “Introduction” in Annual Report of the Archaeological Survey
of India 1903–04. Part I. Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing,
1905, pp. 1–14, at p. 6.
31
Forbes Watson 1869, op. cit. (note 19), p. 1.
32
J.H. Marshall. “Introduction” in Annual Report of the Archaeological Survey
of India 1902–03. Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1904,
pp. 1–13, at p. 13.
33
Marshall 1914, op. cit., p. 30.
176 Sudeshna Guha
34
Supply of Archaeological Photographs to Prof. A.A. Macdonell of Oxford
Institute, File 241, Serial Nos. 1–28, November 1908, Survey Archives.
35
J.H. Marshall. Annual Report of the Archaeological Survey of India 1916–
17. Part I. Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1918a, p. 5.
36
As clarified by Debala Mitra: “Photographs of the monuments and museum
exhibits are available with the Director General of Archaeology, New
Delhi, as well as with the Superintendent, Dept. of Archaeology, Central
Circle, Bhopal. Picture postcards and guidebooks can be obtained from the
Archaeological Offices at Bhopal and Sanchi”. See D. Mitra, Sanchi (New
Delhi: Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India, 1957), p. 2.
37
See B. Spooner (ed.), Annual Report of the Archaeological Survey of India
1921–22 (Simla: Government of India Press, 1924), p. 5.
38
J.H. Marshall. “Memorandum for the Collection of Photographs donated
to the University of Cambridge”. Typescript in Faculty of Asian and
Middle Eastern Studies, Cambridge, 1954.
39
Ibid., p. 4.
40
M. Olin. “Touching Photographs: Roland Barthes’s ‘Mistaken’ Identification”.
In Representations, No. 80, Fall 2002, pp. 99–118, at p. 114.
41
Quoted in S. Piggott, Antiquities Depicted: Aspect of Archaeological
Illustration (London: Thames & Hudson, 1978), p. 1. Also see Piggott’s
William Stukeley: An Eighteenth-Century Antiquary, revised and enlarged
edition (London: Thames & Hudson, 1985), pp. 17–19, for a survey of
scholarship on Roman antiquities and their depiction in Britain before
Stukeley. According to Piggott, Stukeley’s sketch plan of “crop marks”
from buildings in and around Chesterford was among the earliest uses of
observation and records of such archaeological features (p. 52).
42
Layard’s discoveries included the massive Assyrian sculptures of winged
bulls and a library of cuneiform tablets from the site of Küyünjik, which
became better known by its Biblical name, Nineveh. Despite the merits
of his excavations, Layard conducted them in a spirit of one-upmanship,
vying with the French excavator Paul Emille Botta with regard to the task
of unearthing the highest number of buried artefacts with the least possible
outlay of time and money. See A.H Layard, Nineveh and Its Remains: A
Narrative of an Expedition to Assyria (London: John Murray, 1873).
43
R. Sewell. Report on the Amravati Tope and Excavations on Its Site in 1877.
London: G.E. Eyre and W. Spottiswoode, 1880, p. 8.
44
For details of Wheeler’s excavation photography, see S. Guha, “Mortimer
Wheeler’s Archaeology in South Asia and its Photographic Presentation”
in South Asian Studies, Vol. 19, 2003, pp. 43–55.
45
G. Bühler. “Some Notes on Past and Future Archaeological Explorations
in India”. In Journal of the Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol.
27, 1895, pp. 649–60, at p. 655.
46
As stated in a letter dated 10 July 1902 from James Burgess to Marshall.
Jean Philippe Vogel, Archaeological Surveyor of the Frontier Circle
in 1902, had excavated at Pushkalvati and Charsada that year; he also
echoed Burgess’s ire at Cunningham’s methods. See Memorandum on
the Preservation of Archaeological Material in the Peshawar District, File
86/1902, Survey Archives.
47
For example, Marshall, 1939, p. 23. Curzon had asked the Lieutenant
Governor of the North Western Province and Oudh in 1901 to
comment upon the suitability of Vincent Smith as the Director General
of the Archaeological Survey. His own opinion of Smith was that he was
“deficient, both in expert and artistic knowledge and in energy” (telegram
to Lieutenant Governor, dated 27 May 1901, in Indian Archaeology 1899–
1905, p. 8). The latter replied: “I assume Your Excellency desires to control
and co-ordinate provincial operations connected with, firstly, Monumental
Archaeology, and secondly, Epigraphy. On neither subject is Mr. Vincent
Smith an expert. Indeed I believe he knows nothing of architecture. He is
merely an amateur in antiquarian researches connected with Indian history
and religious growth. As Director General of Archaeology, I fear he may be
found wanting” (telegram to Viceroy, dated 27 May 1901, ibid., p. 9).
48
See also Marshall 1916, op. cit. p. 24.
49
J.H. Marshall. Taxila: An Illustrated Account of Archaeological Excavations.
3 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951; Vol. I, p. xiv.
50
Marshall led the excavations at Mohenjodaro in 1925–26. See the map of
archaeological sites on p. 255 of this volume for information on Marshall’s
participation in other excavations.
51
R.E.M. Wheeler. Still Digging: Interleaves from an Antiquary’s Notebook.
London: M. Joseph, 1955, p. 195.
52
R.E.M. Wheeler. Archaeology from the Earth. Middlesex: Penguin Books,
1956.
53
General Correspondence Relating to Mohenjodaro, File 839/1926–27,
Survey Archives.
54
D.O. letter from Colonel R.B. Seymour Sewell to Harold Hargreaves,
1196, 4 May 1926, Survey Archives.
55
D.O. letter from Hargreaves to Sewell, 28 May 1926, Survey Archives.
56
Marshall. 1951, op. cit., Vol. I, p. xvii.
57
Harappa was excavated by Daya Ram Sahni in 1920–21. Rakhal Das
Banerji excavated Mohenjodaro during the 1922–23 season. Although
Marshall has mentioned in places (e.g., “Exploration and Research”, in
Annual Report of the Archaeological Survey of India 1923–24 (Calcutta:
Government of India Printing, 1926), p. 48; and “Mohenjodaro”, in
Annual Report of the Archaeological Survey of India 1925–26 (Calcutta:
Government of India Printing, 1928), p. 72) that Banerji excavated
Mohenjodaro in 1922, the latter explicitly stated that he had excavated
in 1923. See Annual Report of the Archaeological Survey of India 1922–23,
pp. 102–04; also see Banerji’s correspondence with Marshall and with the
Chief Secretary, Government of Bengal, D.O. letter, No. 89/116, 28 April
1925, and 24 August 1925 respectively. File 581/1921–30, Establishment
of Office of the Superintendent A.S. Eastern Circle, Survey Archives.
58
Marshall, 1926, op. cit., pp. 47–54, at p. 47.
59
J.H. Marshall (ed.). Mohenjodaro and the Indus Civilisation, Vol. I.
London: Probsthain, 1931.
60
J.H. Marshall. “First Light on a Long-Forgotten Civilisation: New
Discoveries of an Unknown Prehistoric Past in India”. In The Illustrated
London News, 20 September 1924, pp. 528–31, 548.
61
Harappa and Mohenjodaro were known as ancient sites before the
Indus Civilisation was uncovered through them. See Progress Report of
the Archaeological Survey of India, Western Circle for the Year ending 31
March 1912 (Bombay: Government Central Press) for D.R. Bhandarkar’s
report on his explorations in Mohenjodaro. See also Annual Report of the
Director General of Archaeology for the Year 1920-21 (Calcutta: Superintendent
Government Printing, 1923), pp. 15–17 for Marshall’s account of previous
investigations at Harappa, and on the seals found there.
62
J. H. Marshall. “Conservation”. In Annual Report of the Archaeological
Survey of India 1923–24. Section 1. Calcutta: Government of India
Printing, 1926a, pp. 1–2, at p. 1.
63
D.O. letter No. 609-5782, dated 10 October 1924, to the Secretary,
Department of Education, Health and Land, File 839/1925, Survey
Archives. In another letter (609-309/0/4712, dated 11 November 1924,
ibid.) Marshall remarked that the “Indians have always prided themselves
on the great antiquity of their civilisation and it has long been their hope
that archaeology would furnish tangible evidence to justify their pride”.
Marshall’s own sense of achievement in giving the natives something of
importance through his archaeology is apparent here.
64
A noted Muslim leader and a leading businessman, Ebrahim Haroon Jaffer
began his political career as a member of the Bombay Legislative Assembly
in 1910. In 1915, he became a Member of the Council of States (New
Delhi), and in 1920 was nominated to the Imperial Council of India.
In 1914, he was awarded the title of Khan Bahadur, and was conferred
with knighthood in 1926. He was actively involved in the education of
Muslims in India.
65
Proceedings of Department of Education, Health and Lands, Archaeology and
Epigraphy, Part B, Nos. 149–52, June 1925.
66
Ibid. See also Marshall 1924, op. cit., p. 528; and Marshall 1926,
op. cit., p. 48.
67
Ibid.
68
“Disciplinary Measures against Mr. R.D. Banerji” in Proceedings of
Department of Education Health and Lands, A&E, Part B, pp. 1–4 and
27–29, February and May 1923. Vats had spoken informally on the finds
from Harappa to a correspondent of the Times of India and Banerji had
voiced his opinions on aspects of Survey administration in the Amrita
Bazar Patrika.
69
For example, The Illustrated London News was given the exclusive rights by
Howard Carter to publish colour photographs that were taken during his
excavations at Tutankhamen’s tomb. The editors announced (10 February
1923, p. 194) that “arrangements have been made whereby this journal will
publish all the most interesting photographs dealing with Tutankhamen’s
tomb, including past and future discoveries”. The first special edition
bearing photographs from the excavations went out of print immediately.
Photographs in Sir John Marshall’s Archaeology 177
70
Title of a drawing by A. Forestier on the front cover of the Illustrated London
News, 27 January 1923. The sketch illustrated Petrie’s article “When ‘Falcon
had Flown to Heaven’: An Egyptian King’s Funeral”, p. 114.
71
Marshall 1924, op. cit., p. 528.
72
Sayce had remarked that the discoveries in Punjab and Sind “were even
more remarkable and startling” than what Marshall had supposed,
as they were “likely to revolutionise our ideas of the age and origin
of Indian civilization”. He therefore proposed the possibilities for
“an intercourse” between the Indus and Sumer “during the second
millennium B.C”. See A.H. Sayce, “Professor A.H. Sayce on the
Remarkable Discoveries in India” in The Illustrated London News, 27
September 1924, p. 566.
73
Ibid.
74
C.J. Gadd and S. Smith “The New Links between Indian and Babylonian
Civilisations”. In The Illustrated London News, 4 October 1924, op. cit., p. 614.
75
Ibid.
76
D.O. letter No. 609-309/4712, dated 11 November 1924, to Secretary,
Department of Education, Health and Land, File 839/1925, Survey
Archives. Extracts from this letter are in footnote 63. Marshall also referred
to this letter in Annual Report of the Archaeological Survey of India 1923-24
(1926, p. 48).
77
Mackay excavated another ‘Indus’ site, Chanhudaro, in 1935–36.
78
Gadd and Smith. op. cit., pp. 614–16.
79
Ibid., p. 615. The terracotta head, numbered 7, originates from the
photograph published in Marshall 1924, op. cit.
80
Ibid.
81
Usually attributed to commodities that are earmarked for exchange, the
value of equivalency, which is a term from economics, has been elegantly
developed by the anthropologist Igor Kopytoff, who notes that it “involves
the process by which things that are unlike are somehow made to be alike
with respect to their value, such as the making of yams made comparable
with a mortar or a pot”. See I. Kopytoff, “The Cultural Biography of
Things: Commodities and the Politics of Value” in A. Appadurai (ed.),
The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 64–91, at p. 71.
82
Gadd and Smith 1924, op. cit., pp. 615–16.
83
Edwards 2003, op. cit., p. 132. See also J. Tagg, who remarks in The
Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographs and Histories (Basingstoke
and London: Macmillan Education Ltd., 1988, p. 63) that “photographs
as such have no identity”.
84
Marshall 1931, op. cit., p. 15.
85
Published only in newsmagazines, such as India Today and Frontline. See
also S. Guha, “Negotiating Evidence: History, Archaeology and the Indus
Civilisation” in Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 39, No. 2, 2005, pp. 399–426.