Focusing on the epistemological homology between the construction of archaeological knowledge, archaeological evidence and the nature of archaeological representation, I examine the visual archive produced by Sir Mortimer Wheeler in India between 1944-48, to analyze the ideological ramification of the archaeological project. The discursive nature of Wheeler’s representations was deeply embedded in the disciplinarian ideologies of the colonial project, the scientific project and the military project. This article analyzes Wheeler’s methodical attempt at conflating the three projects by disciplining archaeology as a scientific practice in a colonial space. I argue that this was articulated by appropriating the ideas of ‘epistemic marker’ and ‘ethnic marker’ as visual tropes to transform the visual representations produced in a colonial context into a scientific discourse, aimed at transforming the discipline.
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