Just as a rubber bracelet fad struck America a few years ago, terra cotta ornaments were all the range in ancient India, one anthropologist says.
University of California at Los Angeles professor Monica Smith used colorful PowerPoint slides to discuss the findings from her excavation of the ancient Indian city of Sisupalgarh yesterday in the Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.
Smith said her main goal for the excavation was to find out how the normal people of the city lived in order to understand economic development in ancient cities.
Current anthropological theory states holds that an examination of the elites of society and of the remains left from production yields a strong understanding of a civilization's economy, she added.
She, however, believes that an examination of the lives of ordinary people and the consumption of goods is the key to understanding economic development.
The discovery of clay and terra cotta decorations gave the team the ability to further understand resource consumption, Smith said. She added that wearing terra cotta ornaments seems to have been "akin to the rubber bracelet fad of 2005."
And while it is a common belief that the household, the neighborhood and the urban center were of equal importance to the ancient economy, she said, her own theory is that the household was the most essential aspect.
"The household makes the urban center possible," Smith said. "Decisions are generated in the household and carried out in the neighborhood."
Since the city only lies 40 to 50 centimeters under the surface, damage from local ploughs has been a concern for Smith's team.
Smith said she posed locals around the ruins to add authenticity to her photographs.
The local villagers also provided advice to help the anthropologists, suggesting that they dig circular, rather than square, shafts to view the layers of civilization at the site to keep them from flooding, she said.
Smith plans to return to Sisupalgarh in the winter to continue excavating.
Third-year graduate student Olivia Given said she found the presentation informative.
"I enjoyed hearing about current research," Given said.
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