Re-Discovering Ancient Landscapes: Archaeological Survey of Mound Features from Historical Maps in Northwest India and Implications for Investigating the Large-Scale Distribution of Cultural Heritage Sites in South Asia

Abstract

Incomplete datasets curtail the ability of archaeologists to investigate ancient landscapes, and there are archaeological sites whose locations remain unknown in many parts of the world. To address this problem, we need additional sources of site location data. While remote sensing data can often be used to address this challenge, it is enhanced when integrated with the spatial data found in old and sometimes forgotten sources. The Survey of India 1” to 1-mile maps from the early twentieth century are one such dataset. These maps documented the location of many cultural heritage sites throughout South Asia, including the locations of numerous mound features. An initial study georeferenced a sample of these maps covering northwest India and extracted the location of many potential archaeological sites—historical map mound features. Although numerous historical map mound features were recorded, it was unknown whether these locations corresponded to extant archaeological sites. This article presents the results of archaeological surveys that visited the locations of a sample of these historical map mound features. These surveys revealed which features are associated with extant archaeological sites, which were other kinds of landscape features, and which may represent archaeological mounds that have been destroyed since the maps were completed nearly a century ago. Their results suggest that there remain many unreported cultural heritage sites on the plains of northwest India and the mound features recorded on these maps best correlate with older archaeological sites. They also highlight other possible changes in the large-scale and long-term distribution of settlements in the region. The article concludes that northwest India has witnessed profound changes in its ancient settlement landscapes, creating in a long-term sequence of landscapes that link the past to the present and create a foundation for future research and preservation initiatives.

Mapping Archaeology While Mapping an Empire: Using Historical Maps to Reconstruct Ancient Settlement Landscapes in Modern India and Pakistan

“…The systematic documentation of mound features visible on historic maps will make it possible to filter and query the data set at a later stage to select specific types of features, create thematic maps, quantify aspects of those features, and perform statistical analyses. Although substantial numbers of archaeological sites have already been documented across northwest India [75][76][77][78], attempts to conduct systematic survey using historic maps as a key data source has shown that the currently 'known' sites represent only a fraction of the actual archaeological settlements in the region [84][85][86][87][88]. Although a large number of the almost 9000 mound features visible in the historical maps that have been studied are likely to be natural, if even one tenth of them turn out to be archaeological sites, then the number of known sites in the region will increase dramatically.…”

“…The viability of the categorisation outlined here has been tested in the field over several field seasons [84][85][86][87] (Figure 12), and the detailed results of this analysis are the subject of a separate paper [88]. To facilitate the process of ground-truthing, each feature location was included in a field survey table and assigned Historical Feature Identification Numbers (hf_id), which will be used to create a comprehensive listing of preserved and potentially lost archaeological sites.…”

“…A sample of mound features in the size (2) or size (3) (i.e., those greater than 200 m across on the 1" to 1-mile maps) categories were visited and assessed to determine whether they were extant archaeological sites. This resulted in the identification of in excess of 200 archaeological sites within a delimited study area that were previously unknown [86][87][88]. In the early stages of this survey, it became clear that the smallest features on the historical maps were rarely preserved.…”

Killing the Priest-King: Addressing Egalitarianism in the Indus Civilization

“…2600-1900 BC). In Cholistan, there appears to have been an increase in settlement numbers and in settled area (Mughal 1997;Petrie and Lynam 2020), and in northwest India, archaeological surveys have revealed a significant reduction in the number of settlements surrounding Rakhigarhi (Green and Petrie 2018;Green et al 2019;. The concurrent growth of urban settlement area suggests that a subset of older settlements may have absorbed population from others that were abandoned in close proximity.…”

Remote Sensing and Historical Morphodynamics of Alluvial Plains. The 1909 Indus Flood and the City of Dera Ghazi Khan (Province of Punjab, Pakistan)

“…Despite the obvious problems involved in extrapolating interpretations extracted from very specific geographical and temporal frameworks, small-scale analyses are an important mechanism for understanding the parameters in play for large-scale dynamics. Elsewhere we have addressed the nature of the map sources and their potential for types of analysis performed here, but in a larger scale for the detection of archaeological sites [28,52]. The specific case of DG Khan presented here allows us to address in more detail the significance of historical morphodynamics as one of the many interpretation filters that can be used when observing the available prehistoric settlement distribution maps of the Indus basin.…”