Once an arena of little debate, the historiography of South Asian archaeology and the construction of the South Asian past, or rather South Asian pasts, is fast becoming a focus for exploration. Whilst some have concentrated on individual behaviours, such as Charles Allen's 2008 study of Alois Fuhrer's misdemeanours in the Nepali Terai or Shanti Pappu's 2008 review of the prehistorian Robert Bruce Foote, others have contextualised entire cohorts of scholars, such as within Donald Lopez's 1995 research into the colonial study of Buddhism or Tapti Guha-Thakurta's 2004 volume on institutions of art. Joining this growing corpus is Sudeshna Guha's volume on archaeology, historiography and Indian pasts. A respected researcher who has focused on issues of representation within colonial photography, she has translated her theoretical stance and methodological attention to detail into the study of the underexploited archives which illustrate this volume.

Guha's book opens by stating “that the practices and scholarships of archaeology, traditions of historiography and claims about the past are all artefacts of history” and pledging to critique “existing histories of South Asian archaeology” (p.1). It is divided into five chapters which can be read as standalone essays on particular ‘histories’ or together as a discursive narrative. The introduction reviews these histories as well as offering helpful orientations, including the author's intention “not to dwell upon the Indian exploration of Ancient India during the colonial period” (p.3), not to divide actors into amateur or professional, and to geographically restrict the volume's scope to British India. The first essay reviews Alexander Cunningham's status as an archaeological pioneer. Alluding to an apparent dismissal of Portuguese scholarship and “unreliable indigenous textual traditions” by most scholars, Guha counters by advocating Romila Thapar's stance that there has been a pervasive tradition of historical enquiry in northern India for over a millennium and arguing that, as a new practice, archaeology was endowed with an ancestry and a pioneer who erased pre-colonial learning.

The second essay discusses the introduction of Assyrian antiquities to Bombay in the 1840s, an effect of that city's role as imperial maritime hub. Using this medium to examine “an Indian intellectual milieu that was able to negotiate historical enquiries on the parameters of the western understanding of history” (p.72), Guha suggests that colonial histories used ancient Assyria's fall as an educational illustration for Indian publics. This is not to suggest that Indian communities were naïve receptors as she alludes to the fact that the metropolis’ inhabitants studied the relationship of ancient India and its western neighbours and contributed to the Bombay Museum. The topic of her third essay is well known and examines the relationship between philology and archaeology. However, the use of correspondence between Sten Konow and John Marshall provides a novel insight. The Konow Archive demonstrates that scholar's influence as well as shedding unexpected light on Marshall's excitement at the thought of his excavations “Next Autumn I am going to start on Taxila! What riches we shall get there! I dream of them nightly” (p. 132). Guha's research also unearths more evidence concerning Mortimer Wheeler and Marshall's enmity. The fourth essay examines Vere Gordon Childe's Indus synthesis and Guha stresses that Marshall's earlier excavations strongly influenced Childe. The chapter is not restricted to Childe and evaluates the contributions of both Wheeler and Stuart Piggott. Again, correspondence adds flesh and Piggott's distaste for Wheeler is clear within his reference to “an undignified scramble from job to job; each sucked (fairly) dry and chucked aside as a better opportunity for smash and grab presents itself”. (p.163).

Moving from the scale of a civilisation, the fifth essay opens with a discussion of the label accompanying a Cemetery H jar in the National Museum of India. Guha argues that such labels provide evidence of “chauvinistic histories of cultural legacies” (p.185) by offering them ‘Hindu’ characteristics. She narrates a division between Indian and western archaeologists as to the genesis of the Indus Civilisation and concludes that western studies demonstrate an “intellectual poverty” (p. 227). The use of correspondence is again fascinating and illustrates spats between Wheeler, George Dales, Piggott and Walter Fairservis. The value of archives is amply demonstrated by extracts in the conclusion, particularly D. D. Kosambi's correspondence with Wheeler. Acknowledging the absolute authority of the Archaeological Survey of India and stating that “the dictates of religion. . .guided the archaeological curation of the ownership of national patrimony” (p. 228), Guha's conclusion offers a reflection on the practical and archaeological impacts of Partition. Identifying a difference from early post-Partition scholarship, Guha accuses contemporary ‘nationalistic’ Indian and ‘western archaeologists of Pakistan’ of a “tug of war” over the locus of domestication and metallurgy (p. 239). Further criticising ‘western archaeologists’ for not speaking against “the creations of archaeological evidence for nationalistic histories” (p. 240), the author then examines the male domination of Indian archaeology. The volume concludes with a discussion of the neglect of ‘public archaeology’ and ‘multivocality’ before advising the reaching of consensus with ‘inhabitants of the terrain’ before undertaking excavation or conservation.

A personal and provocative book, Guha's archival research demonstrates that it is incorrect to portray ‘colonial’ archaeologists as monolithic cohorts, they were divided and individualistic. The same would be true of more contemporary archaeologists if one had access to their private papers, although they are notably absent from the volume. Reflecting on focus, Guha has been restricted by a concentration on colonial scholars and British India as personal histories of South Asian scholars and archaeological histories of Nepal, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan might have provided powerful analogues or contrasts. A text rich in criticisms of named and unnamed scholars, there are a few inconsistencies. For example, the site of the Bala Hisar is spelt Charsadda on page 172 and Charsada on page 186. More significantly, Guha mentions a single female field archaeologist on page 243, overlooking the contributions of Bridget Allchin, Nayanjot Lahiri, Shelia Mishra, Shanti Pappu and Rita Wright to name a few. Finally, note must be made of some poorly reproduced illustrations. These shortcomings do not detract from the book's mission, which as B. D. Chattopadhyaya states on the dustcover was to “produce a critical look at the way archaeological knowledge is created and passed on in Indian archaeology and should jolt its institutional leaders out of their seats”.