Memory and material culture among the displaced indigenous communities of the Narmada Valley, Western India

Abstract

This chapter investigates the relationship between heritage, memory, and materiality and proposes a way that we may factor in the increasingly common experience of displacement into archaeological and anthropological study. The study is based on over 2 years of fieldwork in the resettlement sites of Indigenous communities that were displaced due to the mega dam project on the Narmada River. We examine how and in what ways, due to displacement, they have re-emplaced some of the material elements of their previous homes onto the new site and given new contextual meanings to those elements to build a life in a new social and ecological milieu. We link these concerns to ongoing debates in museum studies and archaeology about the nature of displacement and its effects on sustainable heritage and propose how we integrate community experience of displacement into future research in these fields.