Description

It may be recalled that soon after Sir Mortimer Wheeler death (in July 1976), the Government of India, as a befitting tribute to his contribution to the cause of Indian archaeology, decided to institute a series of lectures after his name, to be delivered every alternate year. The present publication marks the beginning of the series-WHEELER MEMORIAL LECTURES — which the Archaeological Survey of India has embarked upon with a certain amount of pride and pleasure, and, in its content, embodies the two lectures, delivered by Professor Grahame Clark on 4 and 5 January 1978 at the National Museum Auditorium, New Delhi.
When Sir John Marshall retired in 1928 he was able to look back on a number of administrative successes, notably the drafting of an Ancient Monuments Preserve tion Act, the devising of the first comprehensive scheme for the conservation of medieval and Mughal architecture and the creation of an epigraphic department of high standard. Furthermore, his period of office included examination of the key site of Taxila over a period of twenty years, resulting in the accumulation of a sub stantial body of archaeological evidence spanning the period 500 BC to AD 500, not to mention the discovery of the Indus Valley Civilization through excavations of Harappa and Mohenjo daro. To set against these suc cesses no serious advance in archaeological technique was made beyond that which had prevailed generally in Greece and the Near East at the beginning of the century. The situation of the Survey was hardly improved by the drastic financial cuts, made during the years following his retirement and it is hardly a surprise that between 1928 and 1944 there were no less than four Director General. Conscious that the Survey had fallen on evil days the Viceroy, through the India office, sum moned an eminent archaeologist, Sir Leonard Woolley, in 1939 to advise on what could be done. His Report, issued in February of the following year, was damning.Leaving aside such relatively minor defects as a hide bound conservation policy and a mistaken one on museums, Woolley found that excavation had been haphazard, initiated for no good scientific reason on new sites or the clearing of old sites which had already yielded their essential information. Still more damning was his finding that the staff of the Archaeological Department are insufficiently trained by precept or by experience’. It was the final recommendation of Woolley’s Report that outside help is necessary if any good is to come of the department’s work that led the Viceroy to conjure Mortimer Wheeler from active service in the 8th Army to head the Archaeological Survey of India in New Delhi.