Drawing mainly on the photographic albums in the personal collection of Sir John Marshall, one of the most reputed British archaeologist of India and the longest serving Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India, this volume explores some of the civilisational histories of `ancient India' that were founded through archaeological fieldwork and its photography. While maintaining focus on Marshall's contributions to South Asian archaeology, it encourages a critical review of archaeology's emergence as an authoritative science in the writing of India's history, and the agency of photographs in establishing parameters of archaeological field research. By engaging with the physicality of scopic and evidential regimes the contributors also showcase the diverse manifestations, and inevitable uses, of archaeological practices within British India.<BR><BR>The Alkazi Foundation for the Arts is a registered charitable trust based in New Delhi. It is primarily dedicated to the exploration and study of the cultural history of India.<BR><BR>Over the last 30 years, Ebrahim Alkazi, the Foundation's Chairman, has amassed a private collection of photographs known as The Alkazi Collection of Photography (www.acparchives.com), an archive of nineteenth- and early-twentieth century photographic prints from South and South-East Asia, amounting to over 90,000 images. The core of the Collection comprises works in the form of photographic albums, single prints, paper negatives and glass plate negatives from India, Burma, Ceylon, Nepal, Afghanistan and Tibet. Almost every region with a history touched by the British Raj is represented. These vintage prints document sociopolitical life in the subcontinent through the linked fields of history, architecture, anthropology, topography and archaeology, beginning from the 1840s and leading up to the rise of modern India and the Independence Movement of 1947.<BR><BR>The photographic archive has been digitally catalogued and documented, and is accessed by researchers, curators, historians and teams of scholars. The material is now being made available to a larger academic community and the general public through a series of publications that are accompanied by exhibitions and seminars. Each volume, under the editorship of a specialist in the field, examines a particular region or topic represented in the archive, encouraging cross-disciplinary approaches and interpretations.