ABSTRACT
The archaeological landscape in Ballabgarh is understood both in ways readily comprehended within modern archaeological thinking and in more exotic ways. Mounds are generally understood as being sites of former settlements, an understanding that may be contextualised in terms of the lived experiences of rural residents where movement of villages has been common enough. Even in the last fifty years or so, the habitation areas of different rural groups have shifted. Among the reasons mentioned by villagers for such shifts are natural causes such as ‘bad’ water leading to infertility (Tilauri Khadar and Kheri Gujran), epidemics (Sehatpur) and inundation by Yamuna flood waters (Dadsia). Other factors relate to socio-political events which include medieval population movements (as in Meola Maharajpur, where the Meos were uprooted by a Gujar community) and the more recent partition of India and Pakistan. The partition period is locally called marshalla, a corruption of the term ‘martial law’,2 and several village sites (such as Agwanpur ka kheda and Baselwah) were abandoned in those violent years. Taken over in many such cases by acacia-dominated forest clumps, the palpable desolation still evident at such abandoned settlements is heightened when the extensive presence of medieval structures with Islamic features in Ballabgarh’s old villages is contrasted with the very small number of Muslims who live there.
