Famous quotes

Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,808 quotes Who coined it · How we decide

English Italiano Polski עברית Français Português فارسی Español 中文 Русский Deutsch العربية हिन्दी 日本語 Ελληνικά Latina

Jim G. Shaffer

63 quotes

“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.”
Jim G. Shaffer (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Jim G. Shaffer (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Jim G. Shaffer (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Jim G. Shaffer (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Jim G. Shaffer (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Jim G. Shaffer (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Jim G. Shaffer (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No material culture is found to move from west to east across the Indus”. [in the relevant time period]”
Jim G. Shaffer (born 1944) first seen 1996 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 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 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...”
Jim G. Shaffer (born 1944) first seen 2010 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 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, Ch…
“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 G. Shaffer (born 1944) first seen 1992 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 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, Univer…
“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’.”
Jim G. Shaffer (born 1944) first seen 2010 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 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.”
Jim G. Shaffer (born 1944) first seen 2001 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded 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.”
Jim G. Shaffer (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Jim G. Shaffer (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Jim G. Shaffer (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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...”
Jim G. Shaffer (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Jim G. Shaffer (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Jim G. Shaffer (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Jim G. Shaffer (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Jim G. Shaffer (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Jim G. Shaffer (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Jim G. Shaffer (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Jim G. Shaffer (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Jim G. Shaffer (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[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 (born 1944) first seen 1999 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 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, K…
“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.”
Jim G. Shaffer (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“These emerging connections and relationships in the northern South Asian archaeological record indicate no significant cultural discontinuities.”
Jim G. Shaffer (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Jim G. Shaffer (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A key to understanding the Indo-Gangetic cultural tradition's structure is its economic and cultural focus on cattle.”
Jim G. Shaffer (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Jim G. Shaffer (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Another aspect o f this regime is the important status of cattle as cultural wealth.”
Jim G. Shaffer (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Jim G. Shaffer (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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”
Jim G. Shaffer (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Jim G. Shaffer (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A diffusion or migration of a culturally complex ‘Indo-Aryan‘ people into South Asia is not described by the archaeological record.”
Jim G. Shaffer (born 1944) first seen 1999 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 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.”
Jim G. Shaffer (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Jim G. Shaffer (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Jim G. Shaffer (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Jim G. Shaffer (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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”
Jim G. Shaffer (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The existing interpretative discussions postulating large-scale human “invasions” simply do not correlate with the physical, archaeological, or paleoanthropological, data.”
Jim G. Shaffer (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Jim G. Shaffer (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Jim G. Shaffer (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Jim G. Shaffer (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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”
Jim G. Shaffer (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Jim G. Shaffer (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Jim G. Shaffer (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Jim G. Shaffer (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Jim G. Shaffer (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Jim G. Shaffer (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source