ABSTRACT
During the third World Archaeological Congress I presented a paper on Indian Stone Age chronology which was subsequently published in Man and Environment (Mishra 1995). That paper was a straightforward compilation and interpretation of the then available evidence for dating the major palaeolithic stages in India. In it I argued for a longer chronology bringing the ages for Indian lower, middle and upper palaeolithic stages into conformity with the recent dates from Africa and Europe. In the last five years this process of placing different sites and ‘stages’ in time has continued, but I am more and more struck by the fact that these reinterpretations depend as much on changing paradigms as they do on new data. In the original Congress paper I had emphasized the role of new data while now, five years later, I want to focus on the equally important role of changing paradigms. I do not want to be overly theoretical, but in this chapter I will discuss several case studies in which this interplay of new data and new theories and assumptions can be illustrated.
