ARCHAEOLOGY — as a modern discipline encompassing other two areas of study — humanity and social sciences — helps us to understand the living activity of pre-historic people covering 99 per cent of the human past from the Paleolithic period until the advent of literacy in societies around the world. It deals with the material culture of human beings beyond the recorded history of their life on earth facilitating researchers to find the missing links of human civilisations dating back to more than 200 years BC.
Unlike a palaeontologist, an archaeologist primarily studies artefacts, utensils, coins, sites and cultural landscapes that involve an empirical survey and excavation, collecting the finds, cataloguing, treating, analysing and recording the data to understand the steps that gradually led to the evolution of living patterns of the inhabitants concerned.
Different schools of archaeology evolved throughout history that witnessed different methods of study starting from the discovery of a mountain depository in ancient Mesopotamia in 550 BC by the first-ever archaeologist in history named Nabonidus to the British archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler during the 1920s and 1930s whose strictly disciplined excavation method called the grid system has been on the high acclaim till date.
His approach to archaeological research played a leading role in establishing this discipline toady as a robust scientific field of study. However, by the fourth decade of the 20th century, most archaeologists working in the field of excavation and survey in the British colonies and in Europe were graduates from different archaeological schools and universities of Europe.
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Archaeology in Bangladesh
DURING the British colonial role archaeological survey, its findings and reports were important for the traders and businesspeople who with the support of the queen had been building trading posts and storage facilities that served as forts for defence later during the pre-British rule in India. Surveys in India at that time focused mainly on determining the mid-streams of rivers and coastlines to find out the strategic points for business expansion.
Later, the British rulers like governor general of Bengal Warren Hastings and viceroy Lord Curzon patronised the archaeological activities because archaeological findings, reports on them and working with ancient manuscripts helped in building a rapport with Indians to an extent that was needed for a better management of their missions in India.
It is pertinent to note that an English translation of the ancient manuscript of Bhagbat Geeta, the discovery of the ruins of Indus Valley civilization —Ìý Mahenjudaru and Harappa, the pole inscription of the Emperor Ashoka were widely accepted and engaged the local people with the activity of the Archeological Survey of India, a highly recognised body in India at that time.
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Pakistan era
THE present act on archaeological conservation and preservation in Bangladesh titled the Antiquities Act 1968 came into being during the Pakistan period. However, the Bangladesh government has worked on it to modify and update it as many of its provisions are not aligned with present context.
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Archaeology as an academic field
VARIOUS public and private universities like Jahangirnagar University, the University of Rajshahi, the University of Chittagong, the University of Liberal Arts and so on in Bangladesh offer bachelor and master’s and courses in archaeology. The courses cover a wide range of areas for study — from the pre-historic age to modern archaeological sites and museum management — while the modus operandi of this being pedagogical, knowledge-based in classroom elaboration on theories on this discipline, laboratory investigation and experimentation as well as extensive field works that obviously involve excavation.
The key contemporary academics to record in this filed are Sufi Mustafizur Rhaman, Professor Sayeed Ahmed, Dr Sayed Mohammad Kamrul Ahsan, Maliha Nargis Ahmed and so on. Owing to the emerging demand in this field, both at home and abroad, young generations are demonstrating increasing interests in studying archaeology and contributing to its applied fields nationally and internationally.
As a result, most of the positions of the managerial as well as supervisory capacity in the Department of Archaeology and museums in Bangladesh have witnessed the induction of fresh graduates in archaeology and related fields coming out from different public and private universities.
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Role of archaeology department
TODAY’S Department of Archaeology is the offspring of an institutional arrangement aimed at the conservation of the then archaeological and historical sites of importance, started in 1861 under the British Indian rule called the Archaeological Survey of India, founded by Alexander Cunningham, who had also been its first director general.
The Department of Archaeology functions as a government entity under supervising control of the cultural affairs ministry, having its own staff, office and other logistic facilities. As of now, it is operating with 368 staff against an approved human resources of 499, including all categories, and having 131 vacant positions to be filled in yet. Since 1971, the archaeology department has been operating having been headquartered in Dhaka and four other divisional offices stationed in Dhaka, Khulna, Chottogram and Rajshahi.
The department has so far registered 536 archaeological sites throughout the country, including two UNESCO-inscribed world heritage sites — the historic mosque city of Bugerhat, Khulna and the ruins of the Buddhist vihara at Paharpur, Rajshahi. A few other important sites are Mahasthangar, Mainamati, Shalban Vihara, Paharpur Bauddha Vihara, Sitakunda Vihara, Kantajir Mandir, Lalbugh Fort, etc. It also runs 22 archaeological museums and sites which are open to visitors round the year. Of them, Dhaka division hosts three, Rajshahi division seven, Rangpur division one, Khulna division six, Chattogram division two and Barishal division two.
The department has, moreover, completed excavation at four sites recently with its own teams of experts. These are (a) Biswa Mura at Bara Uthan union under Karnaphuli in Chattogram (b) Wirat Rajar Bari at Gobindganj in Gaibandha, (c) Dhanpota Dhibi at Kheda Para, Manirampur, Jessore and (d) Puratan Jelkhana at Lalbugh, Dhaka. The teams concerned have already submitted interim reports to the department, which, after examination and verification, would be published in the final reports of the department to be used by researchers and general readers.
As hinted, this government agency operates in accordance with the Antiquities Act 1968. The definitive part of the law defined the antiquity as ‘any ancient product of human activity, movable or immovable, illustrative of art, architecture, craft, warfare, science or of any aspect of civilization or culture’ and the archaeology department has been assigned to register, protect and conserve the same keeping to the provisions laid down in the subsequent sections of the law. Moreover, Section 3 of this law formed an advisory committee composed of the director general as chairman while two members of the parliament and three experts in the field of history and antiquity as members on the committee, which would assist the chair in tasks that entail (a) inquiry to gather information about an antiquity to be registered for protection by the government, (b) mitigate any dispute regarding the ownership of an antiquity, (c) proposing the government to register an antiquity, (d) leasing or purchasing any land in connection with the protection and conservation of any antiquity, (e) dealing or trade in antiquity, (f) the export of antiquity, and (g) cancelling any antiquity from the government gazette and other related functions.
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Bilateral, regional and international cooperation
BANGLADESH has so far signed bilateral agreements/memorandums of understanding or cultural exchange programmes with 41 countries. Forty-six countries more have been prioritised to work with in cultural cooperation forming institutional arrangements in the form of both legal as well as non-binding instruments being developed to be signed gradually. And in most cases, archaeology has been a focal area to consider and work during mutual negotiation and correspondences with Bangladesh’s counterparts. In this whole array of activities, the department’s role has been and would be central.
France has long been a party to Bangladesh which signed an agreement on cooperation in archaeology back in 1992. Since then, the archaeology department has been excavating jointly with the team of French archaeologists at the Mahasthangarh site, an ancient city in today’s Bogra. Moreover, China has showed interest in a feasibility study to develop the Nateshwar Deol site in Munshiganj under a separate memorandum between Bangladesh and China and proposed the participation of experts of the archaeology department in it. The two other preservation and conservation projects in two sites — Rabindra Kuthi Bari at Selaidah and Hammam Khana at Lalbugh Fort, Dhaka — have been completed recently under a bilateral cooperation with financial assistance from India and the United States respectively.
Besides, the Department of Archaeology has submitted nomination files periodically on archaeological and historical sites and monuments of Bangladesh to Islamic Countries Scientific, Educational and Cultural Organization, a 53-member, Morocco-based regional body to safeguard, among others, as indicated in its name, cultural property of its member states. As a result, the regional body has inscribed three heritage sites of Bangladesh in the list of the World Heritage Sites in Islamic countries.
These are Sat Gambuj Mosque, Dhaka, Uchail Shahi Mosque, Habiganj and Bajra Shahi Mosque, Noakhali. Besides, ICESCO has recently communicated with Bangladesh, requesting the submission of more nomination files on Islamic cultural and historical sites to be considered and recommended at the 12th World Heritage Committee meeting in October 2024 for the inscription in its list and the Department of Archaeology is working on the issue.
Moreover, Bangladesh as a signatory to the UNSECO Convention 1972, a convention for promoting and preserving the world’s natural and cultural heritages, is working closely with this international forum and as mentioned earlier, received three — the Sunderbans being in the natural site category — of our national heritage sites inscribed in the World Heritage Sites list.
Additionally, the archaeology department is working to put into a final form the nomination files on one or two most important historical sites out of seven elements in the tentative list previously submitted to the World Heritage Committee of the UNESCO through the permanent delegation of Bangladesh in France to this global forum. In this connection, the department’s role has been been pivotal as it prepares and submits the nomination files to be examined and eventually approved by UNESCO.
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Publication and dissemination
SINCE 1985, the archaeology department has regularly been publishing its annual reports highlighting the activities performed throughout the preceding year. It has various types of publications — annual report, archaeological newsletter, site brochure, etc. The publications are interesting reference documents for both researchers as well as general readers with interests in archaeology in Bangladesh.
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Capacity building initiative
THE archaeology department underscores the capacity or competence of its staff as key to its safeguarding efforts. Hence, it has completed a project titled ‘Training and Capacity Building for long-term management and best practice conservation for the preservation of Cultural Heritage sites and World Heritage Properties in Bangladesh’ recently which was jointly funded by the Bangladesh government and the UNESCO World Heritage Centre. This project has enabled the participants to come up with a comprehensive framework for heritage sites management in the country, including a detailed mapping of the relevant ministries and departments role to implement it if and when the government adopted the same.
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Private sector involvement
APART from the functioning of the archaeology department, a few individual efforts have been recognised and financed by the cultural affairs ministry. Once approved by the government, this type of project also engages the department experts along with the staff of the private organisations concerned. Under this arrangement, archaeological sites like Nateshwar Deol and Wari-Bateshwer are excavated by a group of archaeologists under the supervision of archaeologist Professor Sufi Mizanur Rahman. The teams are required to submit reports to the ministry on the findings of the excavations completed. Two such private organisations in the country are Ogrosor Bikrampur Foundation and Oitijyo Onneshyon.
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State of preservation and management
ANALYSING the role of the archaeology department in protecting and promoting the national archaeological and historical sites and monuments of the country in the perspective of an oft-cited strategic planning and management theory — SWOT, or strength, weakness, opportunity, threat — we see that the strength this agency lies in the fact of its being a government department and its assets — sites all over the country numbering more than 500 — are public property. Moreover, as a policymaker and the supervisory authority of the department, the cultural affairs ministry is capable of adopting any informed decision to make the department’s activities more sustainable.
On the other hand, the weakness of the organisation so far observed can be summed up as the shortage of resources, both human resources and financial; the frequent transfer of officials at the top management; lack of coordination among the ministries concerned and lack of community involvement in site management; lack of attractive, audio-visual presentation materials at the museums, etc while opportunities are many, including creating a detailed master plan considering the countrywide sites that might include strategic financial issues such as government investment and return from it; treating it as a business venture in line with the concept and practice of cultural economy like that in China, Thailand, Nepal and India; and, obviously, taking its prospective role in national sectoral gross domestic product into count, to align the development of archaeology and archaeological tourism as a sector in the national economic development plan.
The threats in this venture can be identified as lack of competence of the staff, which is an internal threat, and the encroachment on property, rapid urbanisation, lack of interest of young generation especially in antiquity, private-party litigation regarding the possession of property, which is an external threat, etc. It can be noted that to determine the strategic position of a given organisation through the SWOT analysis, external competitors are treated as a potential threats. But in case of developing a business model for the sake of sustainable development of this cultural sub-sector, archaeological sites and museums management enjoy a unique status because no private counterparts are present in this field in Bangladesh. Neither is there any probability in this arena.
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Recommendations
BANGLADESH needs to rethink its present status and strategy regarding the protection, preservation and promotion of its cultural propertuy. This would require dedicated time, efforts and resources, both financial and human, so that it might eventually pave the way for building a knowledge-based, enlightened, culturally-responsive nation.
And to do so, it is high time the government planned holistically on archaeological management and its overall development taking the following issues into account:
— the role of a robust policy that would facilitate extensive engagement of all players concerned;
— a revised law on archaeology with necessary institutional and financial support mechanism put in place to make archaeological management relevant in a fast changing time;
— the adoption of a business model-driven master plan at policy level having all the stakeholder on board and following other Asian countries like Bangladesh; and lastly
— mainstreaming culture, in national development plan from now on with a focus on archaeological preservation, protection and promotional activities so that it might eventually result in developing a culturally-conscious people who would steer the overall development.
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Md Mukhlesur Rahman Akand is a joint secretary, cultural affairs ministry.