Archaic and Living Traditions: Ethnoarchaeology of Andaman and Nicobar Archipelago

Abstract

The Andaman and Nicobar archipelago in the Bay of Bengal has been the home of three sects of people and cultures, namely, the natives, hybrids of convicts, and recent immigrants. The initial inhabitation of the islands is known through the study of shell middens and subsequent peopling by early ethnographic accounts and contemporary issue-based studies. The artifact-centric cultural inferences from such excavation reports, ethnographic accounts, material evidence, and living traditions are of immense value in understanding the cultural history of the archipelago. The cultural inferences derived from such studies under five categories—(a) settlements of the coast and the inland, (b) midden artifacts and native practices, (c) osseous trophies and wooden sculptures, (d) pottery and division of labor, and (e) seasons and preservation practices—are of ethnoarchaeological significance, despite the theoretical debate to consider the erstwhile ethnographic studies and museum collections as evidence for ethnoarchaeological interpretation.