Premodern Sigiriya Region an Ethno-archaeological Perspective

EVA MYRDAL-RUNEBJER

"Usually, facts are seen only in as much as there is place for them in the observer ’s mind - it is for this very simple reason that experienced observers see more things more quickly and more precisely than untrained ones!" (Francois Sigaut, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Science, Paris).1

AN ETHNO-ARCHAEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

From where do we get our concepts to interpret the archa­

eological record as to function - material and social? The view on which this chapter is based is that we get it from our experience of the material world, from social practice, and from our human ability to identify, categorize and generalize our experiences.

This doesn’t imply a narrow use of analogies based on similarities as to form, but a knowledge of the material re­ quirements of reality, a notion of what problems could be encountered in everyday life and how they may be solved.

The term ethno-archaeology as used in this chapter refers to knowledge of present day material reality and current prac­ tice. This knowledge could be used to address the archaeologi­ cal record in Sigiriya from the point of view of concrete human experience, using data from the same area as the ar­ chaeological material is obtained. It is to be noted that other researchers have used the term to designate a different ap­ proach to archaeological material, focusing on other aspects of social life.

It is important to underline that the concrete approach to the archaeological record, as argued here, has a long history, and that it is not possible to draw any humanly meaningful conclusions from archaeological material without relating to human experience of some kind, real or invented.

The settlement archaeology research project addresses, a- mong other questions, the economic base - in technological, organizational, spatial and temporal terms - of premodem society in the Sigiriya region. This ethno-archaeological study was undertaken to gain knowledge of the study area, both in terms of the physical possibilities of basic human activities, the activities themselves in terms of technology, seasonal pla­ nning, labour investment and return, as well as their socio­ economic implications.

Figure 15:1 Harvesting mustard in a poly-culture chena in Udavalayagama village. Photo: Eva Myrdal-Runebjer.

With an ethno-archaeological perspective on field surveys, test excavations, archive and museum studies, and through our household-based field studies of contemporary villages, we wanted to get a notion of the spheres of activities that could be associated with a rural settlement, past and present. This in­ cluded the exercise of thinking ahead, from the present struc­ tures and activity areas to their ultimate destruction - that is, how they could be identified archaeologically; what structures, arte-and-ecofacts may survive and in what topographical set­ tings; what implications could be drawn as regards seasonal planning, labour investment, volume of production etc.

This is not to say that the present socio-economic set-up is transferable to what can be archaeologically studied. The most basic of our hypotheses however was that the same laws of nature would apply; that is, the physical limits within which people could act would be possible to define in each case.

The present study however, is to be seen as an initial survey of questions that could be addressed in an archaeologi­ cal settlement study, not as a report from a completed fiel­ dwork. As will become obvious from the following, neither our time in the field nor our personnel resources were adequate to answer all the relevant questions.

As a complement to our concrete material approach, we had hoped to integrate a social anthropological study of land ownership and organization of labour, as seen from the village level. But without trained social anthropologists in the team, or time for field participating studies, it was impossible to achieve this.

The team structure is discussed below. Here it should be added that the reason we could gain as much information as we did was that one of the team members was also a native of the area, living there himself and practising both irrigated and swidden cultivation, and therefore having a concrete practical experience of everyday rural life.

After the following introductory discussion, the field studies will be presented in separate chapters.

Documentation of rural material culture in Sri Lanka The documentation of rural material culture and technology is not well integrated in the Lankan academic sphere. The dif­ ference in field usage between the plough and the ard or the ard and the hoe is commonplace to any peasant, but it lies outside the academic discussion, much as is harvesting by ear and portion-wise pounding, in contrast to bunch-cutting, bundling and buffalo-trampled threshing of the entire harvest - technological complexes which we documented during past years’ fieldwork. The Anuradhapura Folk Museum, for ex­ ample, has an instructive exhibition of swidden cultivation equipment, but there is a lack of academic follow up in Sri Lanka of such initiatives.

Food processing and storage techniques in the Lankan con­ text are other aspects of rural material culture that have been largely ignored by the humanities and social sciences. Food processing the world over is mostly the woman’s task, at least as regards foodstuff from the vegetable kingdom. Although it is essential to the community’s survival and obviously linked to the overall land use system, the seasonal and technological pattern of food procurement and storage, the time women could spend on other productive, or reproductive tasks, and to the socio-economic level of the individual household, few references to actual field documentation can be found.

Apart from occasional notes by early travellers such as Robert Knox and John Davy, colonial administrators like Henry Parker and natural scientists-tumed-cultural historians such as Ananda Coomaraswamy and a few modern ethnog­ raphers, very little is published in this field of study (see under given headlines for references).

The interesting Lankan initiative taken in the late 1970’s of holding a national symposium and later, a seminar, on Sri Lanka’s traditional rural culture, has not, as far as the present writer is aware, had any follow up during the 1980’s or 90’s.

One important contribution to the knowledge of traditional domestic rural architecture today and the use of space within the dwelling, is made by Robert. D. and Bonnie G. Mac­ Dougall, in their study of selected households in a highland village (MacDougall 1977). Apart from documenting the stru­ cture itself, they have made a detailed record of the domestic articles and the activities in time and place of the rural hou­ sehold.

Among previous ethno-archaeological studies in Sri La­ nka, Colin Kirk’s study of pottery production in Matale dis­ trict, in 1983, is probably the most extensive. Modern hand-made pottery was collected for this study and is now available at the Sigiriya Cultural Triangle office as reference material, together with drawings and photographs. The report has not been published.

At present, Martha Prickett of IFS is organizing a nation­ wide study of clay sources, to be related to archaeological finds. This study is based on contacts with present day potters.

One of the aims of the Department of Archaeology of the University of Peradeniya is to develop ethno-archaeological studies in general. As this is written, no publications are yet available.The few published ‘topographical’, ethnographical and ar­ chaeological studies related to rural material culture have, on the other hand, been appreciated by Lankan economic his­ torians pursuing a ‘new reading’ of the historical records, notably Leslie Gunawardana and W.I. Siriweera of the Un­ iversity of Peradeniya.2

FIELDS OF STUDY

Five sub-projects were started, or continued in 1989, 1990, 1991 and 1992, in order to achieve a better understanding of rural archaeology, in addition to archaeological field explora­ tion and test excavation.

An irrigation study and a botanical study were started in 1989 and continued in 1990, 1991 and 1992. The irrigation study is discussed in a separate chapter. The botanical study will be published in a separate volume.

The study of museum collections of excavated iron tools and implements was started in the Anuradhapura Archaeologi­ cal Museum and National Museum, Colombo, in 1989.

To a limited extent, the search for published reference material on Lankan food procurement activities continued during all four seasons.

Household-based ethno-archaeological studies were started in 1989 and continued, with tentative explorations fur­ ther afield, in 1990. In 1991 and 1992 an effort was made to complete the limited studies that had been taken up. These are the studies discussed in this report. There are several important aspects of everyday rural life that have not been followed up in the fieldwork. A few of them are discussed below as possible fields of future study.

Irrigation

The irrigation study is reported on separately. The basic ques­ tions in focus were the investment and organization of labour, the potential of the given irrigation systems and their develop­ ment through time in these respects. This of course means that we, as archaeologists, have to approach various natural and applied sciences with specified questions.

One aspect of the study was a field survey, documenting the physical properties of various irrigation facilities: delinea­ tion, length and height of tank bunds, present sluice technol­ ogy and remains of abandoned sluices, paddy field acreage in the command area of a tank, man made canals, or natural drainage from and to other tanks.

Archaeological excavation techniques were used to docu­ ment tank bund constructions and obtain material for 14C dating.

Another aspect of the study integrated with the ethno-ar­ chaeological village survey, focusing on labour investment and organization in the construction and maintenance of given irrigation facilities. This latter survey was continued by a separate unit between the 1989 and 1990 field campaigns.

Figure 15:2 Ard-share with flanged upper end excavated from Anuradhapura. Provenance and dating not known.

Anuradhapura Archaeological Museum.

Photo: Eva Myrdal-Runebjer.

Botanical survey

The botanical survey is reported by T.R. Prematilleke in a separate volume. A list of cultivated and wild plants used in the households of the study area is included in this volume. The plants were listed as completely as possible in the ethno- archaeological field study.

A study focusing on present and past uses of various plants in households of the area - where they are found, when and how they are harvested/gathered, prepared and stored - could help us to understand in what way given species found in an archaeological context could have been used.3 Knowledge of processing techniques, waste depositing and storage techni­ ques help us to identify the material archaeologically. This knowledge could, for example, give us important facts of the given community’s vulnerability in ‘bad years’.4

Study of museum collections

In the Anuradhapura Archaeological Museum and the Na­ tional Museum in Colombo there are two major collections of excavated iron tools and implements The project obtained their kind permission to study both collections in 1989. The aim was

(a) to investigate how well they were defined in terms of their use in time and space;

(b) to document the implements through drawings, photographs and measurements, describe them as regards physical properties and systematize them in terms of function.

Each implement was indexed and given a separate card, with a small photograph attached and with references to relevant literary sources. In this way we hoped to be able to build an easily available source of reference to be used by students as an introduction to the collections.

Two days were spent in the Anuradhapura Archaeological Museum, documenting 50 items comprising all the agricul­ tural implements - bill-hooks, hoes, sickles and ard-shares; carpentry related tools such as axes (which could have been used for clearing also), adzes, hammers, nails and wedges; and the blacksmith’s small wedges. None of the implements could be said to be well defined in time of usage, but for most of them the provenance was given.

The overall impression was that the artefacts were in a good state of preservation, though seemingly from early ex­ cavations. It wasn’t possible to obtain a chronology of the various items, as no datable stratigraphical references were given.

Figure 15:3 Ard-share with diminutive flanges from present day Uva Province, Kalugahakadura. In form it resembles some of the "hoes” from the iron age/Early Historic site of Adichanallur, southern Tamil Nadu, India. Ethnographical

collection of National Museum, Colombo.

Photo: Eva Myrdal-Runebjer.

Figure 15:4 View over Nagalavava cluster village. Wealth differentiation is seen from difference in building material

and size of houses. Photo: Mats Mogren.

Regarding the National Museum in Colombo, we expected at least 250 items, which were studied and partly published by R. Hadfield in 1912. Two and a half days were spent in the museum. Unfortunately only 45 items could be traced, so nothing definite can be said about the entire collection’s pot­ ential as a chronological reference for iron tools.

Several of the items came from early excavations in Sig- iriya. Some of them were dated 5th century AD in the museum register. They were in a good state of preservation. Different types of ard-shares were noted, compared to the Anuradhapura collection. We intend to continue the study when the rest of the collection is available.

Ethno-archaeological village survey

In the ethno-archaeological village survey we addressed the questions of food-procurement techniques and activity areas, traditional rural housing and village layout, traditional meas­ urement systems, non-mechanized stone-cutting techniques and activity areas, and traditional medicine.

Our interpretation focused mainly on the function of areas and artefacts, in terms of what, when, where, by whom and for whom. A series of questionnaires were designed to structure the interviews.

From our ethno-archaeological perspective, we have foc­ used on the differences we documented (in land use, sea­ sonality, possibilities of complementary activities and related artefacts and structures etc) between irrigated wet-rice cultiva­ tion and subsistence-oriented swidden cultivation. We have defined these differences in terms of two technological com­ plexes. This might prove a useful starting point for future analyses of subsistence patterns of settlement sites.

FUTURE STUDIES

Pregnancy, childbirth and child care

The basic prerequisite of the stratigraphies studied by ar­ chaeologists is, of course, the capability of past societies to raise children, feed them, socialize them and teach them the basic necessary skills to ensure the survival of yet another generation.

This issue has various aspects. If we keep to the viewpoint of reproductive and productive activities, one important ques­ tion is how the cycle of pregnancy, childbirth and child care influences the life of women.

Pregnancy and childbirth involve women’s physical par­ ticipation, and to fulfill these functions successfully certain activities have to be excluded. To a certain degree there are material constants involved in child care, such as breast-feed­ ing, mincing or chewing food for the child when it starts eating solids, protecting it from fire, deep water, wild beasts etc - but here the role of the mother will depend on her position in the prevailing society. We have heard of wet-nurses throughout history, for example.

Figure 15:5 A young mother takes part in the kurakkan harvest. Her older children accompany her and take care of the 15-month-old baby. The work day is 4-5 hours. Two or

three harvesters will complete the kurakkan harvest in this 1.5 acre field within two days. Our presence caused a bigger labour team to assemble, llukvava village, late February.

Photo: Eva Myrdal-Runebjer.

For future studies we wish to underline that:

(a) there are material constants to be fulfilled to ensure the survival of children

(b) these will require active involvement by the adult generation, but

(c) women as mothers have a given material role in pregnancy and childbirth only. The work involved in ensuring the survival of children has been or­ ganized in various ways, depending on how society is organized and the social position of the parents.

(d) whoever undertakes this task, her physical presence is necessary to a greater or lesser degree (dep­ ending on the age of the child). That is, it can’t be ‘technically developed’ to overcome the necessity for active human involvement and physical pre­sence.

(e) the practical, social and intellectual training of chi­ ldren are aspects of child care that are socially determined and culturally defined.

Household size and household wealth

We did not study the relation between number of household members, residential area and storage facilities, to discuss archaeologically based inferences of household size and wealth.5 Note however the discussion regarding the unit of reproduction and area of rural houses below.

Production for the household and specialized production

We did not approach the question of how an ethno-ar­ chaeological study could help to distinguish specialized production from household production in the archaeological record.6

The issue comes into focus with the iron production study program. For pre-industrial iron production we will find no present day parallels, but there are blacksmiths in the area, and blacksmiths’ villages in districts further south, that could be studied for technology and debris accumulation.

Communication and transport

Questions of draught and pack animals used for transport, and the load-carrying capacity of animals and humans requires further study. The archaeological visibility of these activities also calls for more discussion.

Formation of cultural layers

The ethno-archaeological study can be developed to raise questions regarding the formation of cultural layers and the accumulation of archaeological material. What happens to the dwelling house floor, the compound and cattle pen when in use, and what factors act upon them after they have been abandoned?7

In future excavations of rural habitation sites, this ex­ perience could act as a cautionary tale for the excavator who is now dealing not only with stratigraphy to be identified in section drawings, but with underground surfaces, and fragile at that. And not least important, it could act as an idea-generating source when interpreting the material.

This field of study seems to be under way in India, regard­ ing the palaeolithic and Chalcolithic cultures. Also, experimen­ tal excavations of newly abandoned sites have been conducted there. From a Lankan point of view, it is of course important to study the experiences of neighbouring countries like India,where some of the climatically or geologically given forces

acting on the material might be common with the area under study in Sigiriya.Environmental history of the area

The evolution of the landscape and environment at large is a related question. With studies such as these we enter a com­ plex field of soil science that has to be developed in coopera­ tion with geologists and paleobotanists.9 The approach to the material however, is similar to the ethno-archaeological.10

TEAM STRUCTURE

The team structure was not the same during the four seasons. To be able to discuss achievements and setbacks the seasons will therefore be treated individually.

In the first four days of the field season of 1989, the ethno-archaeological unit consisted of five or six people work­ ing eight hours a day. We were then reduced to three people working two hours in the afternoon for 11 days - that is, 54 hours, or about seven work days were spent in ethno-ar­ chaeological field studies in toto. Why was the field-unit reduced? Initially, the plan was to divide the team into smaller independent units that could work simultaneously with dif­ ferent sections of the household. It was very soon found that the idea of documenting rural life from this very detailed point of view was alien to the basic training the students got at the university. That is why independent sub-teams were out of the question. For the household to be visited by six people, of whom at least three had nothing to do but sit around, was of course disturbing, not to mention the waste of project resour­ces.

Why then did we work only two hours in the afternoon? In this case, I wish to define the problem mainly in terms of language - that is, the writer’s lack of Sinhala and the students’ lack of English.

In no undertakings involving interviews and documenta­ tion of human practices can it be satisfactory to communicate through an interpreter. But as it was the writer mainly who had to conduct the interviews, this turned out to be necessary. It was found that the only person who could help us to achieve at least something in the field, was the primary schoolteacher, a native of the village and attached to the project. He himself had practical knowledge, or at least hearsay knowledge of everything listed in the questionnaires, and therefore under­ stood the logic of the questions once the various terms had been translated back and forth. He was indispensable in our work, but could work with us only after school, from 1-3 pm. The security situation in the area and the aggressive elephants determined the end of our working day.

In 1990 the core unit of two Lankan assistants and one Swedish consultant was increased by three Lankan members. We decided to extend our study to cover more questions than techniques related to food-procurement, although hunting, tra­ pping and the collection of wild plants and honey remained to be documented. It was decided that the team of 1989 should complete the food-procurement studies in the afternoons, wo­ rking from 1 till 3-4 pm. The half-day practice was again a result of the school teacher’s professional obligations and the Swedish consultant’s archaeological and irrigation field survey in the morning.

The three new team members were to work in the addition­ al fields of study the whole day, helped in the morning by an assistant from the team of 1989. Traditional building techni­ ques and various areas of activity in the house, the courtyard, the traditional village layout and its topographical setting, con­ stituted one field of study, reported below by Damayanthi Gunawardana, Sudarshani Fernando and the writer. This study was continued by Sudarshani Fernando and Manjula R. Sir- isena in the field season 1992. They worked independently in the field, following the work plan from 1990.11

To be able to estimate yield and investment of labour as reported by the villagers, a study of traditional measurements of area, distance, volume and weight was undertaken by Pri- shanta Gunawardana and reported below. As part of the ethno- botanical program, a study of traditional medicine was started by Chandrika Jayasinghe, who also had the overall respon­ sibility of organizing these additional studies. The study of traditional medicine involved both field studies and reading manuscripts in different villages. A study of traditional stone­ cutting was started by Prishanta Gunawardana. These two lat­ ter studies are not completed.

In 1990 we worked for seven weeks, but as four of the five Lankan team members had duties outside the project (three of them in Colombo) one to five days a week, the actual time

spent in the field was considerably less.

In 1991 the ethno-archaeological unit consisted of two members: the Swedish consultant and the assistant native of the area. Again, owing to other archaeological work and his own teaching obligations, the ethno-archaeological study was conducted for six weeks, between 4 and 6 pm on weekdays and in the field on a few Saturday mornings. The focus of study was trapping and fishing and traditional village boun­ daries. A field participating study of the aba and kurakkan harvest took place in February 1992.

Figure 15:6 Documentation of labour processes. Sowing a chena field taken over by an individual cultivator; late

October; Diyakapilla village. Photo: Eva Myrdal-Runebjer

METHOD AND SOURCE-CRITICAL DISCUSSION

The studies were built on three lines of investigation: labour processes, documentation of equipment related to the process, and documentation of its setting.

The archaeological visibility of swidden cultivation was also discussed and a minor test excavation conducted.

In all, we visited 28 households in relation to the food­ procurement and transport study, but 23 of these were only questioned regarding a few specific activities. Seven hou­ seholds were visited in the Nagalavava study of rural architec­ ture and village layout.

In the study of agriculture and livestock farming, we had listed the various stages in the labour process beforehand, as we knew it from the literature and from practice. This was used as a ‘structuring’ background for the interviews. We al­ ways started by asking to be told about their work in their own words, starting with the beginning of the season; and we only interrupted in order to get the exact data of "where, by whom, for how long" etc, and if we found an anticipated stage miss­ ing, or if some not hitherto known stage of the work was mentioned. In this way the household could sometimes correct our questionnaire, for example, telling us that levelling of irrigated fields nowadays is done not once, but twice in the Sigiriya area.

The limitations of the ethnographical analogy are obvious. What is materially given and what is historically specific in our ethnographical reference material has to be considered. An identification of ecofacts, such as paddy husks, wet-rice grains and kurakkan, combined with a knowledge of climate and natural surroundings, would provide a base for some con­ clusions regarding seasonal planning and land use. This is what most certainly is materially given.

Knowing what kind of implements and other devices and structures were used would bring us a bit further in certainty regarding potential yield and seasonal planning, and a kno­ wledge of techniques used. Based on knowledge of yield pot­ ential in the given environmental setting, we could also discuss the maximum production capacity of a given area. This is materially given in the sense that we can test to what degree different techniques affect the seasonal cycle and potential yield. To infer past power relations on this base only, is not possible however.

Viewing our work source critically, we can also see that we collected information at various levels of reliability. The capacity of the interviewer is, of course, always a factor, no matter how well selected the sources are, so the information obtained has to be judged by its internal consistency and in relation to what is known about the matter from other sources.

The most reliable was the documentation of the actual implements and devices used for a labour process. The ans­ wers we got regarding when and by whom they were made, used and repaired, and for what purpose, we thought to be reliable, though they do not cover all possibilities, related as they were to a specific object.

Next came our detailed questions about the labour process itself - what, where, when, with what and by whom. As long as their answers dealt with practices still in use, we could, by cross-checking information and viewing it in relation to the given whole, that is, the yearly cycle of work, constantly test the pattern emerging. When inconsistencies appeared, we cou­ ld go back and check again.

Often references were made to past usage - for example, to former traditional varieties of paddy and their ripening time. This kind of information is specified in the field material as former practices, and could and should be checked with other sources.

The most problematic and least reliable answers are those related to labour investment and return; that is, man-days per year, quantity of paddy harvested in a given area and number of animals caught in a given trap. The problem is not that it is difficult to obtain information regarding such questions, but for various reasons they involve a greater risk of subjective and misleading information. One obvious problem, when as­ king about time spent on a labour process, is that the informant usually has no reason to think in terms of hours when working for her/his own household, or pooling labour with relatives or neighbours.

In the same manner, it is next to impossible for a villager to tell how much of a wild plant has been collected in one season, or how much time was spent on that. To a large extent, wild plants are gathered on the way to doing other things, along the path to the chena for example. These plants are neither weighed nor stored, but either immediately consumed (as with much of the berries) or eaten for dinner the same or the next day.

Nevertheless, objectively, their collection represents both labour investment and nourishment, and we must find some way of even approximately measuring this. The answer is field participation studies. These could more easily be planned now that the preliminary fieldwork has given a frame of interrelated seasonal activities, to be studied in detail.

Each household was documented on the age and sex of its members and their relationship to the householder. Also in­ dividual occupations. It was intended to document each hou­ sehold’s area of cultivated land, defined as regards type (irrigated paddy land, home garden, chena, highland for per­ manent cultivation, etc.) and nature of occupancy (jointly ow­ ned, singly owned, government owned, rented, leased or held on share-cropping basis). The size and age structure of the household and the land-holding pattern were included in the study, as these factors might directly influence food procure­ ment and house building activities and the kind of equipment used in the labour process.

The various definitions of ownership, or tenancy, of cul­ tivated land, were taken from the socio-economic survey car­ ried out in the area by the Urban Development Authority in 1989. As mentioned above, we could not realize our intention of a parallel social anthropological study. Therefore only five of 28 visited households were documented regarding landh­ olding patterns. Most important for our study at this stage was the actual extent of the cultivated fields.

There is one aspect of our study that constitutes a marked difference from sociological, or socio-economic surveys, apart from our emphasis on material culture and subsistence techni­ ques. Our study is ‘biased’ from the start, as we especially asked about practices now becoming obsolete, practices that are considered backward, searching for families that have not yet moved into the house of brick with corrugated sheet-metal roofs, families that still use the bullock cart instead of the motorcycle and tractor for transport. Most socio-economic surveys and many social anthro­ pological studies aim to explain the present situation to poli­ ticians and administrators, to guide their further actions. Our aim was different (though information regarding everyday life could, of course, be used in a variety of ways). We asked for the villagers’ participation in recording their own history. We sought their expert knowledge of rural practices, gained thr­ ough learning by doing. They have no reason in their everyday life to systematize it and analyze it diachronically. This must be the contribution of the academically trained student. Tog­ ether these two groups might be able to achieve what other­ wise they will not: an understanding of the base of the premodern society.

As regards the structure of the questionnaires, we can con­ clude that they answered the actual stages in the labour process well, with minor adjustments carried out with the help of those we questioned. Neither the literature nor the academically trained team could have provided that information.

This underlines the necessity of developing this area of research. We had, for example, been told that the people in Talkote kept female buffaloes (some in large herds) without ever using them for anything but, it was assumed, as a way of exhibiting the owner’s status.

Coming to Talkote, we found that the female buffaloes as well as the cows were milked regularly, but that the dry sea­ son, culminating in August, was always a great strain on the animals. They often fell ill during this season and stopped producing milk, or did so in such small quantities that it had to be spared for the calves. When we visited the village, hardly any female buffalo or cow could be milked. They were said to be suffering from vasamgata and several newborn calves died, probably from undernourishment, during our stay. When it was possible to milk the animals, both buffalo and cow milk were highly esteemed and used for further processing in the household. A recent development however is that the milk now is mostly sold, instead of being consumed at home.

Further, it had been assumed that the villagers wouldn’t eat beef. But we found that beef was greatly liked by them, but too expensive and couldn’t be afforded very often. The villagers don’t slaughter their animals themselves, but sell them to Mus­ lim traders and then buy the meat from the stalls, if they can afford it. Whether some kind of socially acknowledged restric­ tions circumscribe the slaughter of cows and buffaloes, or the reason for the practice of selling the living animal is mainly economical, is a field for future study. Hens and fish and wild animals may be killed by the householder, or some other male household member. Wild buffaloes sometimes die of exhaus-tion when caught, and their flesh is subsequently eaten.12

Lankan historians and archaeologists have looked into the history of beef eating and the practice of killing cows and buffaloes in the island. W.I. Siriweera, of the Department of History, University of Peradeniya, has made a survey of pub­ lished archaeological material and early literary sources con­ cerning the use of milk and meat from buffaloes and cows in pre-modem times. He concludes that there is evidence of the consumption of both. 13

Ponnampalam Ragupathy calls our attention to cattle bon­ es among the offerings found in the megalithic burials tenta­ tively dated between the 3rd century BCE and the dawn of the our era, in Anaikkottai, in the Jaffna peninsula. Bones of goats and sheep were also found (Raghupathy 1987:115-126,165).

ACHIEVEMENTS AND SETBACKS

After this discussion of intentions, we have to turn to a critical evaluation of implementation. In this context it is important to note that the settlement archaeology project has two aims. One is to produce new knowledge. The other is educational. In planning the ethno-archaeological study, both aspects had to be taken into consideration.

We could discern two major interrelated problems during the field seasons. One, the lack of background knowledge of rural production processes and rural life in general, among a majority of the students; the second, the difficulties of com­ munication, due to language constraints.

The more difficult problem was the lack of background knowledge of present day rural life and the lack of exposure to social anthropological source-critical discussion. To breed a source-critical approach to fieldwork and make the archa­ eological team familiar with the ideas behind the ethno-ar­ chaeological field study, was the main educational target during the fieldwork seasons.

By dividing the team in 1990 and giving full responsibility to Lankan investigators, with the consultant in a true consult­ ing, but not field participating role, combined with regular discussions in the afternoons, we hoped to get away from the merely mechanical work of carrying out someone else’s ideas to carrying out one’s own, with a consciously thought-out aim. This meant, for example, that the Lankan team worked wit­ hout a structured questionnaire. The overall questions were discussed and decided upon together with the Lankan project leaders and the consultant.

The fieldwork dealing with rural architecture and village layout was successfully completed in 1992, by two Lankan team members working independently.

To put our newly obtained knowledge into practice, we arranged three evening seminars with the whole team, in 1990. One was concerned with traditional house building techniques and village layout. The team members discussed information obtained in the Nagalavava cluster village, in relation to what archaeologists had found in the large settlement in southern

Talkote. Another dealt with food-procurement and storage techniques, viewed as a seasonal cycle and presented in terms of interrelated activities. This was discussed mainly in terms of archaeological visibility.

Those two seminars were held almost entirely in Sinhala. The third, held partly in Sinhala and partly in English, was actually a presentation of the irrigation survey, but focused on what implications could be drawn, as regards function, from visible remains of the irrigation system. The discussion was, of course, based on what the ethno-archaeological team had documented.Our implementation however fell far short of our ambition. A more detailed documentation was started as regards imple­ ments, trapping equipment and techniques, fishing equipment, houses and courtyards, animal pens and tank bunds. Chena

(swidden) fields and hunting grounds were discussed with the residents and visited by us Knowledge of the labour processes of swidden cultivation and wet-rice cultivation is based mainly on interviews. Fishing was discussed with villagers and noted in the sense that the tanks and streams had been delineated on the map in the field survey. Foraging was discussed too, but not studied in its natural setting, apart from the occasions when villagers sto­ pped to collect plants on our way to doing other things in the field.

Looking back at the work carried out, it can be concluded that language constraints affected the quantity of work pos­ sible much more than the quality. The problem of not having enough time to spend in the field, with people constantly coming and going, is a practical problem, but again it affects the quantity of data gathered more than the quality.

1. Sigaut, F. 1988:24.

2. See for example Siriweera, W.I. 1982 and Siriweera, W.I. 1986. See also Gunawardana, R.A.L.H. 1983 and Gunawardana, R.A.L.H. 1984.

3. See also an interesting plant list included in Der- aniyagala’s thesis. Deraniyagala 1988:1412-1424.

4. See for example Messer, E. 1979.

5. See for example Kramer, C. 1979.

6. For a review and example of studies of specialization see for example Earle, T., Q. Costin and G. Russell

1986. It is to be noted that these authors have a different view that outlined above, as the control of production of objects of wealth (that is status-indicat­ ing objects) is regarded as the basis of control over the local production to the organization of agricul­ tural production, although the material he uses doesn’t cover the agricultural aspect. See M. Tosi 1984.

7. See for example M. B. Schiffer 1987 regarding the evaluation of accumulated archaeological material in relation to the layers and structures where found. See for example J. K. Stein 1987 regarding properties of the soil vital to the interpretation of cultural layers.

8. See K. Paddaya (1987:83) where "Ethnoarchaeolog- ical studies of the formation processes of present day settlements” (ibid:83) are asked for. Regarding ex­ perimental excavations of contemporary remains, see Bulletin of the Deccan College Research Institute, Pune. Regarding the use of ethnographical parallels for interpretation of archaeological material in an In­ dian context see Shinde, V. 1987 and Shinde, V. 1991

9. See Courty, M. A., P. Goldberg. R. Macphail 1990.

10. This "confrontation of the record with knowledge of present processes” is discussed in Gifford-Gonzalez, D. P. 1981.

11. Due to the sudden death of Damayanthi Gunawar­ dana during the 1991 field season the work had to be completed the following year.

12. Ambivalent views on the consumption of animal fle­ sh are, of course, observed all over the world. In an ethnographical record from the district of Varmland in Sweden 1918, for example, one informant is rep­ orted to have said "The meat of a horse was never made use of, and the poor would rather die of starva­ tion than eat horsemeat." (Keyland, N. Naringar 1: 307 in Nordiska Museet, Stockholm. Translation M- yrdal-Runebjer). The same informant also stated that previously the skinning of dead horses was held in such bad repute that no decent peasant would unter- take it. There is also an interesting account of how this last mentioned view began gradually changing in the early 20th century. Many Swedes today (includ­ ing the writer) will not talk or even think of themsel­ ves as eaters of horse meat, though most of us will, at times, ear "hamburger-meat", which is in fact horse meat processed beyond recognition. Is this hypocrisy a result of repression in the 10th-13th centuries by the Christian church, directed against the heathen practice of ritual slaughter of horses? Or is it simply that the horse in a large part of Sweden was neces­ sary for transport (and also became a close friend) until the first quarter of the 20th century? This ques­ tion has so far not been seriously studied.

13. According to Siriweera it is probably during a few hundred years from the end of the Anuradhapura period until the 14th century that the practice of not eating beef spread to the population at large. Os- teological material dated to sometime between 40- 0BCE-200CE suggests beef eating by people with access to the centre of Anuradhapura. From the 1st century CE people who were instrumental in the writing of what we consider literary sources of infor­ mation, argued against beef eating. During the late historical period there were people eating beef, but defined by high caste Sinhalese as low and unclean. See Ancient Ceylon. 2, December 1972 and Siriw­ eera, W.1.1982:5-16.