All Things Archaeology

Many of us are very passionate about achieving our goals in the field which doesn’t have vast scope as compared to Commerce, Engineering,and Medicine etc. One cannot always rely on parents financially and when we try to take up a career in something the very next thing that comes to our head is this career going to pay all my bills? Will it make me financially independent? Getting a job in the field of archaeology is not an easy thing. Archaeology is a subject which is both humanistic and scientific.This study involves use of scientific techniques for reconstructing past. A job of an archaeologist is mainly to reconstruct past human activities based on the material remains, and these material study form an independent field or branch of archaeology. They bring in independent branches and subjects of expertise. For.eg. the archaeological studies are divided into Prehistory, Proto-history,and History. Which are further divided accordingly under these three categories. The subject of hist...

While I was pondering upon the topic of my next article, I thought of writing about the evidence of dogs and their role in the lives of ancient humans. While recalling zooarchaeology classes from my masters days, it occurred to me that we were never taught about cat domestication. So I started exploring how and when did cats get introduced into the domestic households and consequently decided to write about it. Dogs have been domesticated as pets in every sense, however, cats are really only tamed. Dog remains have been reported in plenty from the archaeological record in contrast to the limited cat remains. Dogs had a purpose for being domesticated i.e. providing security in return for consistent food supply and shelter but I wonder what such purpose did cats serve when they first began living amidst human settlements? The relationship between cats and humans is believed to have started through commensalism. The term commensal simply means ‘eating at the same table’ or in this particu...

You’re probably wondering why on earth did I choose to write about combs?!!! Well, a few weeks ago, I noticed a very unusual long wooden comb in my house that had tines on both ends. I asked my mother why does it look different and I was told it is a louse comb. It suddenly occurred to me that a little thing such as comb is a part of the basic grooming kit and would have been as important to the olden people as it is to us Rapunzels with long hair! (in no way implying that people with short hair don’t use combs). So anyway, it followed that I looked up combs in the archaeological record and to my surprise, I came across various articles from all around the world. I never thought that an object like comb could be a subject to such intricate carvings and motifs as I shall discuss about shortly. It seemed like the perfect first daily archaeological object to be blogged about. The exact kind of comb I was intrigued by! In my mother tongue i.e. Gujarati, a daily use comb is referred to as a...

I have been approached by my juniors and aspiring archaeologists many a times for guidance in applying for studying archaeology outside of India. I finally decided to blog about it so now I can direct people to this link and let them read in detail about the various possibilities. If you are reading this now, hi! I will try to make this article as insightful as I can. At the end of this article, I have listed a few universities, both in India and abroad to get you started.  If any doubts persist after you have read this, feel free to reach out to me. There are two ways to go about this: 1. You are looking to study abroad and want to settle outside India in the future. 2. You are looking forward to training abroad and coming back to India and plan to pursue your career in the country For all the people whose preference is the first option, you all have plenty of options to choose from. If you do not plan on pursuing higher studies, I would recommend you complete your Bachelors in Ar...