NEPALESE HISTORY IN A EUROPEAN EXPERIENCE: A CASE STUDY IN TRANSCULTURAL HISTORIOGRAPHY

In March 2013, a group of German, Nepalese, and Swiss historians, Indologists, and an architectural historian gathered for a workshop in Nepal to develop a new approach to the understanding of South Asian historiography, especially the Nepalese chronicles from the nineteenth century. The outcome is the present collaboratively written article. It is argued that, in the past, the analysis of South Asian historiography has been preoccupied by arguments based on an understanding of history that highlights facts and events. A transcultural and multidisciplinary approach, however, would overcome the common dichotomies of factuality and fictionality, history and myth, or evidence and truth. Recognizing the specificity of South Asian historiography, the article develops an approach to bridge asymmetries and entanglements in the academic use of the past in a way that also opens up a new perspective on Western historiography. By analyzing the religious, spatial, literary, and historical, and contemporary or context‐related aspects of a nineteenth‐century chronicle and by using “fieldwork” as a methodological tool for studying historiography, it is proposed to understand the framing of time and the making of sequences and historical periods as an open process that results in the constant and synchronic creation of chronological spaces.     

Non-invasive Archaeology of Skeletal Material by CT Scanning and Three-dimensional Reconstruction

The remains of an ancient Sumerian skeleton, approximately 7000 years old, were investigated using the techniques of stereolithography. The very fragile and delicate skeletal material was recovered in a block, thus retaining it in the soil matrix. The excavated block was CT-scanned and the skeletal material was rendered in three dimensions. This formed the basis for a stereolithographic model of the mandible, which was used for physical and dental anthropological studies. Skeletal remains may thus be made available for research without having to remove them from the local matrix, which may be an advantage in an archaeological or palaeoanthropological setting. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.