Darshanie Ratnawalli, … being the first part of an interview with Professor Raj Somadeva published in The Nation (print edition here) on Sunday,9th November 2014
Professor Raj Somadeva, PhD (Uppsala), Post Graduate Institute of Archaeology, Sri Lanka
Raj Somadeva, one of the top Sri Lankan archaeologists, has drawn attention to his work in recent times with two interesting claims viz: discovery of a yaksha inscription and the existence of Buddhism in the island complete with a cave dwelling monastic sangha prior to the 3rd century BC. He spoke to Darshanie Ratnawallie on these claims as well as the ideological debates within the discipline. The following are excerpts of the interview.
DR: Dr. Susantha Goonathilaka, the president of Royal Asiatic Society, Sri Lanka alleges that you call every settlement complex a ‘civilization’ indiscriminately when cities and/or evidence of writing are necessary for a culture to be called a civilization. How do you define a ‘civilization’?
RS: First I want to say that I am confident about what I am saying and also academically and professionally qualified to say so. Civilization is a particular state of development achieved by humans. It is mainly characterized by an ‘urban way of life’. This is a highly relative notion. My stand on what is civilization appeared in my book titled ‘Urban Origins in Southern Sri Lanka’. It was published in 2006 by the UppsalaUniversity in Sweden in their series of Global Archaeology. Presence of a writing system and cities are not the valid characteristics for identifying the emergence of civilization any more. This ‘bundle of criteria’ of pre-modern urbanism was first explained by Gordon Child in his seminal article on ‘Urban Revolution’ published in the 1940s. Now this list of criteria has been discredited as a non-representative ‘laundry list’ which is not adequate to explain pre-modern urbanism. You have ancient civilizations that had no writing system. For example the civilization of Great Zimbabwe. You have civilizations that had no proper cities. For instance take the case of the Egyptian civilization. Continue reading
