Jim G. Shaffer

Jim G. Shaffer (born 1944) is an American archaeologist and professor of anthropology at Case Western Reserve University.

Quotes

1980s

The Indo-Aryan Invasions: Cultural Myth and Archaeological Reality (1984)

1984 Shaffer, J.G. "The Indo-Aryan Invasions: Cultural Myth and Archaeological Reality." In People of South Asia: The Biological Anthropology of India, Nepal and Pakistan. J.R. Lukacs, (Ed.). New York: Plenum Press, pp. 77-90.

quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. also in : THE ṚGVEDA AND INDO-EUROPEANS Author(s): Nicholas Kazanas

• The concept of an Indo-European or Indo-Aryan group of peoples has played a prominent role in interpretative studies of Old World history and archaeology. For almost 200 years, scholars and quasi scholars have attributed the linguistic, cultural, and racial affiliations of very disparate groups to a common Indo-Aryan heritage. In such widely separated areas as Europe and India, many significant cultural changes recorded for the first and second millennia B.C. are attributed to an influx, or invasion, of Indo-Aryan peoples who shared a common cultural base and who were responsible for important socioeconomic and linguistic changes in the areas they invaded.
  • 77

• However, in South Asian studies the concept of an Indo-Aryan invasion continues to be the main explanation for the cultural history of that region. The importance of these invasions is linked to the persistent opinion that the Indo-Aryan invaders were the authors of early Vedic (Sanskrit) literature, which is viewed as the foundation for all subsequent' 'Indian civilization. "
  • 77

• Despite the early misgivings of some scholars about such a correlation between language and race and the circular nature of many of the arguments, the concept of a common linguistic, cultural, biological, and historical heritage linking European and Indian peoples became internationally accepted as more fact than theory. Based on linguistic reconstructions, the prehistoric to historic chronologies of Europe and India were interpreted as reflecting various invasions of Indo-European or Indo-Aryan peoples who possessed a common cultural heritage, albeit remote. For Europe, this concept ultimately resulted in the disaster of the Third Reich, whereas in South Asia, the concept of Indo-Aryan peoples played a quite different cultural role.
  • 79

• This brief historical discussion indicates that the Indo-European or Indo-Aryan concept was intimately connected with other social, cultural, and political movements from the 18th to the 20th centuries. In Europe, it was tied to the attempt to distinguish a Christian heritage from that of the Jews. Once formulated, it underwent social and political changes climaxing in what was Nazi Germany.
  • 81

• In both instances, the Indo-Aryan concept was never subjected to rigorous validation beyond the field of historical linguistics. Linguistic reconstructions were used to interpret archaeological materials, which in tum were used to substantiate the original cultural reconstructions. It was not until the mid-20th century that archaeological data were independently used to examine the validity of the Indo-Aryan concept.
  • 81

• The discovery of extensive nonceramic occupations associated with early domesticates at Mehrgarh, dated to pre-6000 B.C. (Jarrige and Meadow, 1980). This site clearly establishes the antiquity of humans in the Greater Indus Valley and, therefore, provides the chronological depth, making plausible the hypothesis that the domestication of plants and animals and the rise of civilization"in the Indus Valley was an indigenous cultural process.
  • 82

• At present, the archaeological record indicates no cultural discontinuities separating PGW from the indigenous protohistoric culture. That is, PGW culture represents an indigenous cultural development and does not reflect any cultural intrusion from the West, that is, an Indo-Aryan invasion. Therefore, there is no archaeological evidence corroborating the fact of an Indo-Aryan invasion.
  • 85

• Two conclusions may be drawn from the archaeological data. First, there is no connection between PGW culture and that of the Aryans. Second, if the "Aryan" concept is to have any cultural meaning, then such a culture (PGW) had an indigenous South Asian origin within the protohistoric cultures of the Ganga-Yamuna region. There was no invasion from the West. The current archaeological evidence suggests that the original reconstruction indicating the occurrence of an Indo-Aryan invasion mistakenly associated linguistic change with the migration of peoples. Linguistic changes and affiliations are brought about by a complex series of cultural processes, many of which do not involve the physical movements of social groups.
  • 85

• It is argued that current archaeological data do not support the existence of an Indo-Aryan or European invasion into South Asia at any time in the pre- or protohistoric periods. Instead, it is possible to document archaeologically a series of cultural changes reflecting indigenous cultural development from prehistoric to historic periods. The early Vedic literature describes not a human invasion into the area, but a fundamental restructuring of indigenous society that saw the rise of hereditary social elites.
  • 88

• The Indo-Aryan invasion(s) as an academic concept in 18th- and 19th-century Europe reflected the cultural milieu of that period. Linguistic data were used to validate the concept that in tum was used to interpret archaeological and anthropological data. What was theory became unquestioned fact that was used to interpret and organize all subsequent data. It is time to end the "linguistic tyranny" that has prescribed interpretative frameworks of pre- and protohistoric cultural development in South Asia.
  • 88

• Linguistic reconstructions have a reputation of scientific validity based on the study of existing languages (written and non-written). However, linguistic reconstructions based upon supposed rates of linguistic change are the archaeological equivalents of estimating absolute chronology from the depth of deposits. There are simply too many intervening cultural and historical variables to permit any great degree of cross-cultural accuracy. In archaeology, such methods were replaced when better aids to cultural identification, such as radiocarbon dating, became available. Linguistic reconstructions for the area are no longer independently supported by the archaeological data, and even if one is reluctant to disregard these reconstructions completely, the present data nonetheless suggest critical reevaluation of earlier interpretations.
  • 88

1990s

• “No material culture is found to move from west to east across the Indus”. [in the relevant time period]
  • Jim Shaffer. Personal communication (to K. Elst) during the 1996 Indus-Saraswati conference in Atlanta GA., quoted in Elst, Koenraad (1999). Update on the Aryan invasion debate New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

The Indus Valley, Baluchistan and Helmand Traditions: Neolithic Through Bronze Age (1992)

1992 Shaffer, J.G. "The Indus Valley, Baluchistan and Helmand Traditions: Neolithic Through Bronze Age." In Chronologies in Old World Archaeology. Second Edition. R.W. Ehrich, (Ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. I:441-464, II:425-446.

• The previous concept of a Dark Age in South Asian archaeology is no longer valid.... [we have a] cultural continuum stretching from perhaps 7000 BC into the early centuries AD...
  • Shaffer, Jim G., ‘The Indus Valley, Baluchistan, and Helmand Traditions : Neolithic through Bronze Age’, in Ehrich, Robert W., (ed.), Chronologies in Old World Archaeology, third edn, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago & London, vol. I, p. 459.in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

• A cultural tradition refers to persistent configurations of basic technologies and cultural systems within the context of temporal and geographical continuity. This concept facilitates a stylistic grouping of diverse archaeological assemblages into a single analytical unit, while limiting the need for establishing the precise nature of cultural and chronological relationships that link assemblages but imply that such relationships exist..
  • Jim Shaffer, 1992, The Indus Valley, Baluchistan and Helmand traditions. Neolithic through Bronze Age. In Chronologies in Old World Archaeology, edited by R.W. Ehrich, Volume 1,441-464; Volume 2,425-446. Chicago, University of Chicago Press. p 442

Reurbanization: The Eastern Punjab and Beyond (1993)

1993 Shaffer, J.G. "Reurbanization: The Eastern Punjab and Beyond." In Urban Form and Meaning in South Asia: The Shaping of Cities from Prehistoric to Precolonial Times. Studies in the History of Art No. 31. H. Spodek and D.M. Srinivasan, (Eds.). Washington DC: National Gallery of Art, pp. 53-67.

• Taken together, the above traits establish that despite significant differences, urban developments in the Indus-Sarasvatī and Ganges regions do belong to ‘a single Indo-Gangetic cultural tradition which can be traced for millennia’; in the words of Jim Shaffer, ‘a continuous series of cultural developments links the so-called two major phases of urbanization in South Asia’, the Harappan and the historical. His conclusion is plain: ‘the essential of Harappan identity persisted’.
  • Shaffer Jim G., ‘Reurbanization: The Eastern Panjab and Beyond’, , pp. 60, 58 & 63. as quoted from Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

• Shaffer (1993) refers to one set of data that undermines this simplistic portrayal of an apparent devolution and re-evolution of urbanization, which "has nearly become a South Asian archaeological axiom" (55). Although there appears to have been a definite shift in settlements from the Indus Valley proper in late and Post-Harappan periods, there is a significant increase in the number of sites in Gujarat, and an "explosion" (300 percent increase) of new settlements in East Punjab to accommodate the transferal of the population.
  • Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press.
  • 1993. "Urban Form and Meaning in South Asia: The Shaping of Cities from Prehistoric to Precolonial Times." Studies in the History of Art 31:53-67.

The Cultural Tradition and Paleoethnicity in South Asian Archaeology (1995)

1995 Shaffer, J.G. and D.A. Lichtenstein. "The Cultural Tradition and Paleoethnicity in South Asian Archaeology." In The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia: Language, Material Culture and Ethnicity. G. Erdosy, (Ed.). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, pp. 126-154.

Quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press.

• Most prior interpretations attributed significant cultural developments, except early hunting-gathering adaptations, to external factors such as ethnic intrusions or invasions, diffusing ideas and technologies developed outside the region, usually in the West. Current information, however, suggests that these earlier, still persisting interpretations cannot explain the cultural complexities now found in the archaeological record.
  • 126

• Nineteenth century philologists (Bowler 1989; Ölender 1992; Poliakov 1974; Shaffer 1984) also invoked invasion as a primary explanation for ling­uistic and cultural change. Indeed, the Aryan invasion(s) into South Asia became the foundation o f philological studies. The Aryan invasion(s) depicted in Vedic oral traditions, and its later literature, had by the mid-twentieth century evolved, thanks to European philology, into an unquestioned historical fact.
  • 128

• The Mehrgarh excavations near Sibri, Pakistan, changed our understanding of the origins of food production - the use of domesticated plants and animals in a neolithic context - in South Asia. Previously, food production and the entire “village way o f life” were perceived as a single complex, diffused from the W est sometime after 5000 B.C. They, in turn, were followed by the “idea” of civilisation only a few millennia later, then by the Aryan, Greek, Muslim and British invasions. The acceptance of one incidence of cultural diffusion/invasion made the others seem that much more reasonable.
  • 130

• Detailed studies of plant and animal remains suggested that domesti­cated species were present in the earliest levels. The plant economy, reconstruc­ted from thousands o f seed impressions in mud bricks, was quite sophisticated... The presence o f wild examples o f wheat and barley suggests that their domestication was an indigenous process; o f some antiquity...
  • 130

• The gradual reduction in size, a phenomenon associated with domesti­cation, and the occurrence o f wild progenitors in earlier levels, indicate that the domestication o f these animals was also a local process.... Although similar species were domesticated elsewhere, the pattern in which hum an actors arranged them in South Asia was distinctive to the region.
  • 131

• Moreover, available chronologies indicate that Mehrgarh was contemporary with comparable Southwest Asian phenomena which, combined with the abs­ence o f contemporary food producing groups on the Iranian Plateau, argues against a diffusionist explanation. The Mehrgarh data raise serious questions about diffusion as an all-encompassing explanation for major South Asian cultu­ral developments. The sophistication of this aceramic neolithic food-producing complex, and its early date, suggest the possibility that subsequent bronze and early iron age cultural developments were likewise indigenous.
  • 131

• Given these characteristics, a preference for cattle, after 5000 B.C., undoubtedly influenced other social, economic and political rela­tionships, and suggests that cultural developments in South Asia did not simply parallel those in Southwest Asia, where groups did not have a comparable bias.
  • 132

• The numerous and substantial mud brick “granaries” built by the close of Period HA at Mehrgarh, in the first half of the 5th millennium B.C., suggest a concern, unparalleled in contemporary cultures, for surplus production irrespec­tive of what was stored in them.
  • 132

• By the close of Period II, at ca. 4500/4300 B.C., not only was a distinctive, domestic animal subsistence pattern established, but other cultural traits were present that would cha­racterise this region down to the Early Historic Period.
  • 132

• At the same time the use - pattern o f animal domesticates was significantly different, indicating that the social and economic contingencies surrounding the development and propagation o f food production were likewise different. It follows, therefore, that subsequent patterns o f cultural development need not mirror those found elsewhere. Finally, Mehrgarh demonstrates that food production cannot be attributed to a single area, “people”, or linguistic group as recently proposed by Renfrew.
  • 133

• However, he also emphasizes that between material and nonmaterial aspects of “mature” Harappan culture a sense o f “oneness” exists, and striking similarities are found at sites, exemplified by the stamp seals. This “oneness” is very significant since “mature” Harappan sites are distributed over an area of 800,000 km 2 , a region larger than any contemporary state or non-state culture.
  • 136

• Unfortunately, there is an “academic status” associated with studying ancient states. Therefore, it is likely that either the “state” will be rede­fined to fit the “mature” Harappan pattern, or that “mature “Harappan culture will be moulded to the contours o f existing definitions, at the expense of exploring alternative explanations.
  • 136

• [the demographic eastward shift of the Harappan population during the decline of their cities, i.e. an intra-Indian movement from Indus to Ganga,] “is the only archaeologically documented west-to-east movement of human populations in South Asia before the first half of the first millennium BC”, while the archaeological record shows “no significant discontinuities” for the period when the Aryan invasion should have made its mark.
  • Jim G. Shaffer and Diane A. Lichtenstein: “The concepts of ‘cultural tradition’ and ‘palaeoethnicity’ in South-Asian archaeology”, in G. Erdosy, ed.: The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia, p. 139-140., quoted in Elst, Koenraad (1999). Update on the Aryan invasion debate New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

• The shift by Harappan groups, and perhaps, other Indus Valley cultural mosaic groups, is the only archaeologically documented west-to-east movement of human populations in South Asia before the first half of the first millennium BC.
  • 139

• These emerging connections and relationships in the northern South Asian arch­aeological record indicate no significant cultural discontinuities.
  • 140

• This review of archaeological data demonstrates that a continued division of South Asian cultural history into discrete archaeological “cultures” or “sta­ges” such as non-Harappan, “early” Harappan, “mature” Harappan, Kot Dijian, “late” Harappan, Painted Gray Ware and others masks the existence of a long surviving cultural tradition, and distorts the processes responsible for the cultu­ral changes this variety of designations represents. Archaeological data indicate the existence of a long-term cultural tradition responsive to changing cultural and ecological contexts, with an ability to adjust to rapid, as well as long-term, changes.
  • 140

• A cultural tradition refers to persistent configurations o f basic technologies and cultural systems as well as structure within the context of temporal and geographic continuity.
  • 141

• A key to understanding the Indo-Gangetic cultural tradition's structure is its economic and cultural focus on cattle.
  • 143

• These factors suggest, given the increasingly arid savanna ecology of the Grea­ter Indus Valley after ca. 4000 B.C., that this continued preference for cattle was a deliberate cultural decision by the social groups in the area, and that cattle were objects of important cultural wealth.
  • 143

• Another aspect o f this regime is the important status of cattle as cultural wealth.
  • 145

• Although generalisation is difficult, the economic importance o f cattle was not paralleled by their use as a motif on craft objects such as painted pottery; indeed, cattle motifs were rare on “mature” Harappan pottery. On the other hand, terra­ cotta cattle figurines are ubiquitous at m ost sites, especially Harappan sites, attributed to this cultural tradition. Traditionally these figurines, and those of other animals and “bullock” carts, are designated “toys” since m ost are only summarily crafted. A few cattle figurines were, however, finely sculptured and may not be “toys” in the same sense as the others. Moreover, cattle figurines, along with cart frames, occur by the hundreds even at small Harappan sites such as Allahdino.
  • 145

• Cattle motifs frequently occur, however, on one culturally important object - Harappan stamp seals. Cattle motifs are the second most frequent (5%), and if “unicorn” motifs are included (66%), they are the most frequent. A debate persists as to whether the “unicorn” motifs are actually bull profiles or true “unicorns” , since a few terracotta “unicorn” figurines have been found.
  • 145

• Since stamp seals were not available to everyone in a social group, and because their inscriptions most likely reflect titles and/or personal names, it is reasonable to conclude that cattle were invested with social importance and cultural identity. Moreover, if seals were also a marriage talisman, as Fairservis argues, they suggest that cattle constituted a wealth category associated with forging important social relationships such as marriage. Furthermore, if cattle, as wealth, provided access to reproductive sources, they were probably also avenues to establishing, maintaining or breaking other important social, economic, political and religious relationships.
  • 146

• Cattle, like other wealth objects, may be accumulated and inherited; however, like other animal wealth, they must ultimately be spent before becoming a liability or dying. Land and craft items, such as metals, as wealth objects have a longevity and accumulability absent in animal wealth. Given these limita­tions, the focus on cattle as wealth may have fostered a perception of all wealth objects as being ultimately temporary, items that must be spent during life and redistributed after death, like the herd (e.g., Goldschmidt 1969). It is possible that social status symbols were not elaborate tombs or monumental works as in other ancient societies, but, rather the extent and solidarity o f secular and sacred relationships constructed by individuals and larger social units, through astutely spending their live wealth before it died. Social status itself might have been perceived as temporary, waxing and waning with fortunes of the herd, and it was the relationships rather than the physical symbols of such status that were perpetual. Cattle as an important wealth aspect of the Indo-Gangetic cultural tradition's structure constantly posed the problems of how to spend, or divide, live wealth to the maximum of individual and larger social unit advantage, generating a social, political, economic and religious organisation unlike others in the ancient world.
  • 146

• Although the use of cattle as important cultural wealth declined in the first millennium B.C., their religious status remained high, or intensified, providing an im portant cultural link between the protohistoric and Early Historic Periods
  • 147

Migration, Philology and South Asian Archaeology, 1999

Migration, philology and South Asian archaeology by Jim G. Schaffer & Diane A. Lichtenstein

Shaffer, Jim G. and Diane Lichtenstein, 1999. “Migration, Philology and South Asian Archaeology.” In Aryan and Non-Aryan in South Asia: Evidence, Interpretation and Ideology, edited by J. Bronkhorst and M. Deshpande. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University. quoted also in Bryant, E. F., & Patton, L. L. (2005). The Indo-Aryan controversy : evidence and inference in Indian history. Routledge . James Schaffer of Case Western University, Migration,Philology and South Asian Archaeology in Aryan and Non-Aryan in South Asia: Evidence, Interpretation andHistory, edited by J. Bronkhorst and M. Deshpande, University of Michigan Press 1998. attributed at [1] [2]. quoted in The Languages of Harappa. Witzel, Michael. Feb. 17, 2000. 1998. “Migration, philology and South Asian archaeology.” In Aryan and Non-Aryan in South Asia: Evidence, Interpretation and Ideology, J. Bronkhorst and M. Deshpande (eds.). In press, Ann Arbor. 1999 ‘Migration, philology & South Asian archaeology’ in J Bronkhorst & M Deshpande (eds) Aryan and Non-Aryan in South Asia, Cam, Mass, HOS (239- 260).. in ** Kazanas, N. (2003). Final reply: Indo-Aryan migration debate. Journal of Indo-European studies, 31(1-2), 187-240.

• While lacking fullest data, there is a growing consensus that the Harappan culture originated as a result of local cultural developments. "Mesopotamian" inventions are not needed to explain it.
  • 246

• A diffusion or migration of a culturally complex ‘Indo-Aryan‘ people into South Asia is not described by the archaeological record.
  • Shaffer (1999:245)

• ...thus there is no “Vedic night” separating the prehistoric/protohistoric from the early historic periods of South Asian culture history. These data reinforce what the site of Mehrgarh describes - an indigenous cultural continuity in South Asia of several millennia.
  • 255

• The modern archaeological record for South Asia indicates a cultural history of continuity rather than the earlier eighteenth through twentieth century scholarly interpretations of discontinuity and South Asian dependence upon Western influences. The cultural and political conditions of Europe's nineteenth and twentieth centuries were strong influences in sustaining this interpretation. It is possible now to discern cultural continuities linking specific social entities in South Asia into one cultural tradition. This is not to propose social isolation nor deny any outside cultural influence. Outside cultural influences did affect South Asian cultural development in later historic periods, but an identifiable cultural tradition has continued, an Indo-Gangetic Tradition linking diverse social entities which span a time period from the development of food production in the seventh millennium BC to the present.
  • 255-6

• That the archaeological record and ancient oral and literate traditions of South Asia (ie. the Vedic tradition) are now converging has significant implications for regional cultural history. A few scholars have proposed that there is nothing in the 'literature' firmly placing the Indo-Aryans, the generally perceived founders of the modern South Asian cultural tradition(s), outside of South Asia, and now the archaeological record is confirming this. Within the context of cultural continuity described here, an archaeologically significant indigenous discontinuity occurs due to ecological factors (ie. the drying up of the Sarasvati river). This cultural discontinuity was a regional population shift from the Indus Valley, in the west, to locations east and southeast, a phenomenon also recorded in ancient oral (ie. Vedic) traditions. As data accumulates to support cultural continuity in South Asian prehistoric and historic periods, a considerable restructuring of existing interpretive paradigms must take place. We reject most strongly the simplistic historical interpretations, which date back to the eighteenth century, that continue to be imposed on South Asian culture history. These still prevailing interpretations are significantly diminished by European ethnocentrism, colonialism, racism, and antisemitism. Surely, as South Asian studies approaches the twenty-first century, it is time to describe emerging data objectively rather than perpetuate interpretations without regard to the data archaeologists have worked so hard to reveal.
  • p 256.

• The academic investment in this hypothesis [i.e. AIT] is so great that the distinguished scholar Colin Renfrew (1987) opts to distort the archaeological record rather than to challenge it... The South Asian archaeological record reviewed here does not support Renfrew's position or any version of the migration / invasion hypothesis. Rather, the physical distribution of sites and artifacts, stratigraphic data, radiometric dates and geological data can account for the Vedic oral tradition describing an internal cultural discontinuity of indigenous population movement.
  • 256 (footnote)

2000s

South Asian archaeology and the myth of Indo-Aryan invasions (2005)

Jim Shaffer. South Asian archaeology and the myth of Indo-Aryan invasions in : Bryant, E. F., & Patton, L. L. (2005). The Indo-Aryan controversy : evidence and inference in Indian history. Routledge

• Despite a plea by one South Asian scholar to be “. . . hopefully somewhat free from the ghosts of the past”, the legacy of a post-Enlightenment western scholarship concerning South Asian prehistory and history has been for the arguments to be repeated so often as to become dogma.
  • 75

• Academic discourse in philology, ethnology, archaeology, paleontology, biology, and religion was plumbed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to substantiate a sense of self and shared identity in a newly expanded view of the known geographic world and in a reassessment of a chronology of human antiquity beyond a Biblical interpretation of human origins.
  • 76

• It is singularly refreshing, against this dogmatic pursuit of what may be an unobtainable goal, to know there are South Asian scholars who “. . . do not believe that the available data are sufficient to establish anything very conclusive about an Indo-European homeland, culture, or people”
  • 81

• The existing interpretative discussions postulating large-scale human “invasions” simply do not correlate with the physical, archaeological, or paleoanthropological, data.
  • 81

• Lacking fullest data, there is, nonetheless, a growing consensus that Harappan culture is the result of indigenous cultural developments, with no “Mesopotamian” people or diffusions of Western inventions, by whatever means, needed to explain it.
  • 83

• Given the meticulous archaeological efforts to identify culture patterns for the geographic areas described, and with the relative and radiometric chronologies established for the archaeological record, it seems that there is no “Vedic night” separating the prehistoric/protohistoric from the early historic periods of South Asian culture history. Rather, these data reinforce what the site of Mehrgarh so clearly establishes, an indigenous cultural continuity in South Asia of several millennia.
  • 92

• The modern archaeological record for South Asia indicates a history of significant cultural continuity; an intrepretation at variance with earlier eighteenth through twentieth-century scholarly views of South Asian cultural discontinuity and South Asian cultural dependence on Western culture influences.
  • 93

• We have already noted that the scholarly paradigm of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in conflating language, culture, race, and population movements has continued, with historical linguistic scholars still assiduously attempting to reconstruct a Proto-Indo-European language and attempting to link that language to a specific “homeland,” in order to define population migration away from that seminal geographic base
  • 93

• The current archaeological and paleoanthropological data simply do not support these centuries old interpretative paradigms suggesting Western, intrusive, cultural influence as responsible for the supposed major discontinuities in the South Asian cultural prehistoric record.
  • 93

• The image of Indo-Aryans as nomadic, conquering warriors, driving chariots, may have been a vision that Europeans had, and continue to have, of their own assumed “noble” past.
  • 93

• It is currently possible to discern cultural continuities linking specific prehistoric social entities in South Asia into one cultural tradition. This is not to propose social isolation nor deny any outside cultural influence. Outside cultural influences did affect South Asian cultural development in later, especially historic, periods, but an identifiable cultural tradition has continued, an Indo-Gangetic Cultural Tradition linking social entities over a time period from the development of food production in the seventh millennium BC to the present.
  • 93

• The archaeological record and ancient oral and literate traditions of South Asia are now converging with significant implications for South Asian cultural history. Some scholars suggest there is nothing in the “literature” firmly locating Indo-Aryans, the generally perceived founders of modern South Asian cultural tradition(s) outside of South Asia, and the archaeological record is now confirming this. Within the chronology of the archaeological data for South Asia describing cultural continuity, however, a significant indigenous discontinuity occurs, but it is one correlated to significant geological and environmental changes in the prehistoric period. This indigenous discontinuity was a regional population shift from the Indus Valley area to locations east, that is, Gangetic Valley, and to the southeast, that is, Gujarat and beyond. Such an indigenous population movement can be recorded in the ancient oral Vedic traditions as perhaps “the” migration so focused upon in the linguistic reconstructions of a prehistoric chronology for South Asia.
  • 93

• We reemphasize our earlier views, namely that scholars engaged in South Asian studies must describe emerging South Asia data objectively rather than perpetuate interpretations, now more than two centuries old, without regard to the data archaeologists have worked so hard to reveal.
  • 94

• Pollen cores from Rajasthan seem to indicate that by the mid-third milennium BC, climatic conditions of the Indus Valley area became increasingly arid. Data from the Deccan region also suggests a similar circumstance there by the end of the second millennium BC. Additionally, and more directly devastating for the Indus Valley region, in the early second millennium BC, there was the capture of the Ghaggar-Hakra (or Saraswati) river system (then a focal point of human occupation) by adjacent rivers, with subsequent diversion of these waters eastwards. At the same time, there was increasing tectonic activity in Sindh and elsewhere. Combined, these geological changes meant major changes in the hydrology patterns of the region. These natural geologic processes had significant consequences for the food producing cultural groups throughout the greater Indus Valley area. Archaeological surveys have documented a cultural response to these environmental changes creating a “crisis” circumstance...
  • Jim Shaffer. South Asian archaeology and the myth of Indo-Aryan invasions in : Bryant, E. F., & Patton, L. L. (2005). The Indo-Aryan controversy : evidence and inference in Indian history. Routledge

2010s

The Development of the Oxus Civilization North of the Hindu Kush (2019)

2019 Shaffer, J.G., H.P. Francfort, B. Lyonnet and C.A. Petrie. “The Development of the Oxus Civilization North of the Hindu Kush.” In The Archaeology of Afghanistan: from Earliest Times to the Timurid Period, (2nd edition) ed. by W. Ball and N. Hammond, pp. 99-160. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press.

• There has been further discussion of the position of the Oxus Civilisation regarding the problem of the Indo-Aryans in relation to the Indus Civilisation, and its problems regarding the connections between the Indian Subcontinent and Central Asia, especially Bactria.255 The literature is abundant, but the archaeological material does not support the theory of the crossing of the Hindu Kush by Indo-Aryan or Aryan tribes, whether they are identified as the ‘Oxus people’, or with the ‘Andronovo tribes’. Andronovo-type pottery has been found at Shortughaï and in the Dashli sites in Afghanistan, as well as almost everywhere in Central Asia north of the Hindu Kush, after around 1800 bc, but there is no reported evidence for this ware to the south of the Hindu Kush. On the other hand, there is evidence for Oxus Civilisation material to the south of the Hindu Kush, but no conclusive proof that the distribution of this material represents a migration rather than other types of exchange or trade.

• It is now clear that the Oxus Civilisation played a major role in the socio-­economics and politics of the late third and early second millennia bc, extending far and wide across Central Asia, and exchanging and/or having contact with populations living in a number of other regions.

Quotes about Jim Shaffer

• In a joint paper, “Migration, philology and South Asian archaeology”, two of the participating archaeologists, Jim Shaffer and Diane Lichtenstein, confirm and elaborate their by now well-known finding that there is absolutely no archaeological indication of an Aryan immigration into northwestern India during or after the decline of the Harappan city culture. It is odd that the other contributors pay so little attention to this categorical finding, so at odds with the expectations of the AIT orthodoxy.
  • Elst, Koenraad (2007). Asterisk in bharopiyasthan: Minor writings on the Aryan invasion debate.

• The paper by J. Shaffer and D. Lichtenstein will illustrate the gulf still separating archaeology and linguistics. It reflects recent disillusionment with the traditional paradigmsdominating archaeological explanation be the cyclical models of cultural growth-florescence-decay, the continuing prominence — in South Asian archaeology at least — of diffusionism, or the obsession with the “Harappan Civilisation” at the expense of other social groups constituting the cultural mosaic of the Greater Indus Valley. Apart from the influence of 19th century ideas on the civilising mission of European powers, such views have also been fostered by an inadequate definition of “cultures” as recurring assemblages of artefacts (after Childe 1929). The authors, therefore, attempt to construct new analytical units based on a study of material culture, with special focus on the concept of “cultural tradition”. The paper builds on an earlier study Shaffer (1991), by placing emphasis on hitherto neglected structural features of cultural traditions; more importantly, it demonstrates by way of an example the potential of this method to lay bare the dynamics of long-term cultural change. The new concepts mark a significant advance in ways of handling the material culture of South Asia. Although they could certainly accommodate models of lan‘guage change, however, the authors stress the indigenous development of South Asian civilisation from the Neolithic onward, and downplay the role of language in the formation of (pre-modern) ethnic identities.
  • G. Erdosy (1995), p. xiii. George Erdosy (ed.) (1995): The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia, Berlin, Walter de Gruyter.

• But first a glimpse of the archaeological debate. In a recent paper, two prominent archaeologists, Jim Shaffer and Diane Lichtenstein (1999), argue that there is absolutely no archaeological indication of an Aryan immigration into northwest- ern India during or after the decline of the Harappan city culture. It is odd that the other participants in this debate pay so little attention to this categorical finding, so at odds with the expectations of the AIT orthodoxy, but so in line with majority opinion among Indian archaeologists.
  • Elst K in Bryant, E. F. (2008). The Indo-Aryan controversy: Evidence and inference in Indian history. London: Routledge. 236

• Or it mainly was American professor James Shaffer, not exactly a “Hindu nationalist”, whose 1984 paper on the archaeological assessment of the hypothesised Aryan invasion threw the gauntlet against AIT complacency. He noted that already for more than half a century, well-financed excavations in the Harappan area had been looking for traces of the Aryan immigration (whether violent, as the archaeologists had expected, or under the radar, as they were later forced to postulate), but no trace had appeared. Indian archaeologists were becoming skeptical but the signal for them to gradually go public with this, at least in India to start with, was Shaffer’s statement.
  • Elst K. In The Eye of the Storm Again: The “Aryans” September 13, 2023

• Did Aryans exist? This is a question posed by James Shaffer (1984b). He begins his analysis with a review of the idea of Aryans in both western and Indian sour­ces, but concentrates upon evaluation of the claims that the Aryan presence is to be found in the Harappan and/or PGW cultures. He finds several problems in the argument that the ancient Harappans were Aryans. Shaffer notes that the discovery of extensive nonceramic occupations associated with early domestica­tion of animals at Mehrgarh, Baluchistan, date to before 6000 B.C., thereby establishing the antiquity of human occupation of the Indus Valley region and giving strong support to the idea that civilisation arose indigenously in this part of the world. In short, no invasion of more highly endowed populations is called for.
  • Kenneth A. R. Kennedy, “Have Aryans been identified in the prehistoric skeletal record from South Asia?” in The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia, ed. George Erdosy