Robin Coningham
Professor Robin Coningham holds the UNESCO Chair in Archaeological Ethics and Practice in Cultural Heritage in the Department of Archaeology at Durham University, UK and was the Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Head of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Health between 2008 and 2015.
He studied Archaeology and Anthropology at King's College, Cambridge and, after a six-month appointment as Graduate Scholar of the British Institute in Eastern Africa, returned to King's to complete his PhD under the supervision of the late Dr F.R. Allchin, FBA. He then joined the Department of Archaeological Sciences at Bradford in 1994, becoming Professor of South Asian Archaeology and Head of Department in 2004. He moved to a Chair in Archaeology at Durham in 2005 and was Head of the Department of Archaeology between 2007 and 2008 before becoming Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Head of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Health.
Professor Coningham is committed to field research and has conducted fieldwork in Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka aimed at refining Early Historic chronologies and investigating the region's second, Iron Age, urbanization, the genesis of Indian Ocean trade and the early archaeology of Buddhism. Past projects range from excavations in the Citadel of Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka's earliest capital, and deep sounding at the Bala Hisar of Charsadda in the Vale of Peshawar - one of the great sites on Pakistan's portion of the Silk Road, to reinvestigations of the birthplace and childhood home of the Buddha in Nepal.
With colleagues from Sri Lankan, Indian and British Universities, he co-directed a major AHRC-funded investigation of the hinterland of Anuradhapura, analyzing the organization and development of the city's extra-mural settlements. This work recognizes the centralizing role played by Buddhist monasteries within the hinterland as well as the role of irrigation in sustaining colonization in the island’s Dry Zone.
He also worked in Iran, where joint excavations supported by the Iranian Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization, The University of Tehran, The British Academy and the British Institute of Persian Studies at Tepe Pardis and Tepe Sialk are beginning to provide a firm chronology for the spread of late Neolithic communities in the Central Plateau of Iran and their socio-economic developments.
Professor Coningham is committed to the preservation of cultural heritage, joining 20 international missions for UNESCO and reviewing the Research Framework for the Brú na Bóinne UNESCO World Heritage Site for the Irish Government. He parallels this with an interest in the relationship between identity and cultural heritage in regions of conflict as well as the impact of the international trade in illicit antiquities. Further to this commitment, he launched the Centre for the study of Ethics of Cultural Heritage with the Durham philosopher, Geoffrey Scarre. He co-directed the new excavations and survey at the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Lumbini in Nepal, the birthplace of the Buddha, and the new archaeological explorations at Tilaurakot in the Nepal Terai, identified by many as ancient Kapilavastu, the childhood home of the Buddha.
In addition to these activities, Professor Coningham is a member of the British Academy's Sponsored Institutes and Society’s Committee (BASIS) and International Engagement Committee, and former posts include Reviewer for Panel SH6 of the European Research Council, Honorary Secretary of the British Institute of Persian Studies (The British Academy) and member of Research Panel 1 of the Arts and Humanities Research Council. He is a Trustee of the Ancient India and Iran Trust (Cambridge) and Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society and acted as a QAA specialist in Archaeology for seven Departmental reviews and was a QAA Review Chair for a further five. He has conducted publication evaluations for Cambridge University Press, Thames & Hudson, AltaMira Press, Current Anthropology, Antiquity, Asian Perspectives, Cambridge Archaeological Journal, Iran, and South Asian Studies and was a member of AHRC's Peer Review College and has evaluated grants for the National Science Foundation, American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies, The British Academy and NERC. Professor Coningham was also a Governor of the North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust.
Professor Coningham has successfully supervised 15 research students through to the completion of their PhDs and would be pleased to supervise research postgraduate students interested in the Archaeological visibility of Buddhism, Caste and the development of craft specialisation, Indian Ocean trade, International cultural resource management, Later Prehistory and Early Historic archaeology of Southern Asia (from Iran to Myanmar), Politics, identity and archaeology, Urbanisation and the Prehistory of Iran. Please email him about potential topics
His email is r.a.e.coningham@durham.ac.uk
Address: Department of Archaeology
Durham University
South Road
Durham
DH1 3LE
UK
He studied Archaeology and Anthropology at King's College, Cambridge and, after a six-month appointment as Graduate Scholar of the British Institute in Eastern Africa, returned to King's to complete his PhD under the supervision of the late Dr F.R. Allchin, FBA. He then joined the Department of Archaeological Sciences at Bradford in 1994, becoming Professor of South Asian Archaeology and Head of Department in 2004. He moved to a Chair in Archaeology at Durham in 2005 and was Head of the Department of Archaeology between 2007 and 2008 before becoming Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Head of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Health.
Professor Coningham is committed to field research and has conducted fieldwork in Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka aimed at refining Early Historic chronologies and investigating the region's second, Iron Age, urbanization, the genesis of Indian Ocean trade and the early archaeology of Buddhism. Past projects range from excavations in the Citadel of Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka's earliest capital, and deep sounding at the Bala Hisar of Charsadda in the Vale of Peshawar - one of the great sites on Pakistan's portion of the Silk Road, to reinvestigations of the birthplace and childhood home of the Buddha in Nepal.
With colleagues from Sri Lankan, Indian and British Universities, he co-directed a major AHRC-funded investigation of the hinterland of Anuradhapura, analyzing the organization and development of the city's extra-mural settlements. This work recognizes the centralizing role played by Buddhist monasteries within the hinterland as well as the role of irrigation in sustaining colonization in the island’s Dry Zone.
He also worked in Iran, where joint excavations supported by the Iranian Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization, The University of Tehran, The British Academy and the British Institute of Persian Studies at Tepe Pardis and Tepe Sialk are beginning to provide a firm chronology for the spread of late Neolithic communities in the Central Plateau of Iran and their socio-economic developments.
Professor Coningham is committed to the preservation of cultural heritage, joining 20 international missions for UNESCO and reviewing the Research Framework for the Brú na Bóinne UNESCO World Heritage Site for the Irish Government. He parallels this with an interest in the relationship between identity and cultural heritage in regions of conflict as well as the impact of the international trade in illicit antiquities. Further to this commitment, he launched the Centre for the study of Ethics of Cultural Heritage with the Durham philosopher, Geoffrey Scarre. He co-directed the new excavations and survey at the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Lumbini in Nepal, the birthplace of the Buddha, and the new archaeological explorations at Tilaurakot in the Nepal Terai, identified by many as ancient Kapilavastu, the childhood home of the Buddha.
In addition to these activities, Professor Coningham is a member of the British Academy's Sponsored Institutes and Society’s Committee (BASIS) and International Engagement Committee, and former posts include Reviewer for Panel SH6 of the European Research Council, Honorary Secretary of the British Institute of Persian Studies (The British Academy) and member of Research Panel 1 of the Arts and Humanities Research Council. He is a Trustee of the Ancient India and Iran Trust (Cambridge) and Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society and acted as a QAA specialist in Archaeology for seven Departmental reviews and was a QAA Review Chair for a further five. He has conducted publication evaluations for Cambridge University Press, Thames & Hudson, AltaMira Press, Current Anthropology, Antiquity, Asian Perspectives, Cambridge Archaeological Journal, Iran, and South Asian Studies and was a member of AHRC's Peer Review College and has evaluated grants for the National Science Foundation, American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies, The British Academy and NERC. Professor Coningham was also a Governor of the North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust.
Professor Coningham has successfully supervised 15 research students through to the completion of their PhDs and would be pleased to supervise research postgraduate students interested in the Archaeological visibility of Buddhism, Caste and the development of craft specialisation, Indian Ocean trade, International cultural resource management, Later Prehistory and Early Historic archaeology of Southern Asia (from Iran to Myanmar), Politics, identity and archaeology, Urbanisation and the Prehistory of Iran. Please email him about potential topics
His email is r.a.e.coningham@durham.ac.uk
Address: Department of Archaeology
Durham University
South Road
Durham
DH1 3LE
UK
less
InterestsView All (14)
Uploads
Papers by Robin Coningham
For these reasons, the damaged heritage sites of Nepal are currently being subject to a ma-jor program of consultation, reconstruction and conservation. As part of this post-disaster phase of evaluation, Durham University, in close cooperation with the Department of Ar-chaeology, Government of Nepal and under the overall authority of the UNESCO Repre-sentative to Nepal, was requested to carry out a post-disaster urban archaeological investi-gation, evaluation and interpretation mission in the Kathmandu Valley UNESCO World Her-itage Property. This included observing damage to subsurface archaeological heritage at the three major Durbar Squares of Hanuman Dhoka, Bhaktapur and Patan and making recom-mendations for post-disaster archaeological responses for heritage in the Kathmandu Valley. The following observations and discussions are drawn from a report submitted to UNESCO and the Department of Archaeology immediately following our mission in 2015 (Coningham et al. 2015).
collapse and cultural discontinuity, and engaged in more general discussions of the long-term viability
of communities, with reference to external factors, be they invasions, migrations or natural disasters, rather than through attempts to identify continuity in populations, ideologies and technologies. Perhaps the most famous example of a collapsed past civilisation is that of the Roman Empire, whose demise was traditionally attributed to invasions of Visigoths, Vandals and Huns following a general decline in civic and military standards (Gibbon 1841). Subject to a heavy degree
of romanticisation by Victorian scholars, in reality the Roman Empire continued to flourish in the eastern portion of the Empire for many more centuries, albeit in a slightly different guise, and the western areas had already been overrun several times before they were finally lost (Tainter 1988: 11). Likewise, the palatial Bronze Age Minoan Civilisation of the eastern Mediterranean was originally thought to have rapidly collapsed after a series of earthquakes, tsumanies and ash clouds associated
with the eruption of Thera c. 1500 BCE, coupled with the expansion of the Myceneans to the Cyclades and Crete (Marinatos 1939). However, more recent scholars have stressed the effect of more complex environmental stresses which led to a decline in agriculture, the abandonment of major elite settlements, including the palaces (Antonopoulos 1992). As is clear from these earlier studies, the traditional focus of archaeologists and ancient historians has been identifying the point of collapse, attributing responsibility to single human or natural events with little focus on the adaptability or sustainability of the society or community under scrutiny.
These early studies were entirely in line with the dominant theoretical model in Anglo-American archaeology, the Cultural Historical, which promoted a concept that past cultures only changed through external factors, such as human or natural factors (Renfrew 1973). In contrast, the succeeding dominant model, known as New Archaeology or Processual Archaeology, concentrated far more on the impact of feedback, both negative and positive, on communities, which were themselves viewed as closed systems (Trigger 1989). This shift in focus from external to internal factors has, in turn, shifted academic focus to a consideration of continuity rather change and an awareness of issues of longevity, resilience and sustainability.
This chapter will present a number of recent examples of how our understanding of sustainability within past communities is developing with reference to case-studies from across the globe before examining the Central Plateau of Iran in more detail and, in particular, the archaeological sites of Tepe Pardis in the Tehran Plain and Sialk in the Dasht-e Kashan. We will argue that rather than portraying past societies and civilisations as victims of environmental, political or societal
collapse, we may instead trace how communities have managed their landscape, developed new technologies and, when necessary, moved in order to survive. Whilst less dramatic in terms of narrative, this chapter will highlight the ingenuity that characterises humankind, and the instinct for survival. Finally, by viewing the past through the lens of sustainability, we can begin to approach present-day environmental challenges in the same manner and make lessons from the past relevant to the present.
For these reasons, the damaged heritage sites of Nepal are currently being subject to a ma-jor program of consultation, reconstruction and conservation. As part of this post-disaster phase of evaluation, Durham University, in close cooperation with the Department of Ar-chaeology, Government of Nepal and under the overall authority of the UNESCO Repre-sentative to Nepal, was requested to carry out a post-disaster urban archaeological investi-gation, evaluation and interpretation mission in the Kathmandu Valley UNESCO World Her-itage Property. This included observing damage to subsurface archaeological heritage at the three major Durbar Squares of Hanuman Dhoka, Bhaktapur and Patan and making recom-mendations for post-disaster archaeological responses for heritage in the Kathmandu Valley. The following observations and discussions are drawn from a report submitted to UNESCO and the Department of Archaeology immediately following our mission in 2015 (Coningham et al. 2015).
collapse and cultural discontinuity, and engaged in more general discussions of the long-term viability
of communities, with reference to external factors, be they invasions, migrations or natural disasters, rather than through attempts to identify continuity in populations, ideologies and technologies. Perhaps the most famous example of a collapsed past civilisation is that of the Roman Empire, whose demise was traditionally attributed to invasions of Visigoths, Vandals and Huns following a general decline in civic and military standards (Gibbon 1841). Subject to a heavy degree
of romanticisation by Victorian scholars, in reality the Roman Empire continued to flourish in the eastern portion of the Empire for many more centuries, albeit in a slightly different guise, and the western areas had already been overrun several times before they were finally lost (Tainter 1988: 11). Likewise, the palatial Bronze Age Minoan Civilisation of the eastern Mediterranean was originally thought to have rapidly collapsed after a series of earthquakes, tsumanies and ash clouds associated
with the eruption of Thera c. 1500 BCE, coupled with the expansion of the Myceneans to the Cyclades and Crete (Marinatos 1939). However, more recent scholars have stressed the effect of more complex environmental stresses which led to a decline in agriculture, the abandonment of major elite settlements, including the palaces (Antonopoulos 1992). As is clear from these earlier studies, the traditional focus of archaeologists and ancient historians has been identifying the point of collapse, attributing responsibility to single human or natural events with little focus on the adaptability or sustainability of the society or community under scrutiny.
These early studies were entirely in line with the dominant theoretical model in Anglo-American archaeology, the Cultural Historical, which promoted a concept that past cultures only changed through external factors, such as human or natural factors (Renfrew 1973). In contrast, the succeeding dominant model, known as New Archaeology or Processual Archaeology, concentrated far more on the impact of feedback, both negative and positive, on communities, which were themselves viewed as closed systems (Trigger 1989). This shift in focus from external to internal factors has, in turn, shifted academic focus to a consideration of continuity rather change and an awareness of issues of longevity, resilience and sustainability.
This chapter will present a number of recent examples of how our understanding of sustainability within past communities is developing with reference to case-studies from across the globe before examining the Central Plateau of Iran in more detail and, in particular, the archaeological sites of Tepe Pardis in the Tehran Plain and Sialk in the Dasht-e Kashan. We will argue that rather than portraying past societies and civilisations as victims of environmental, political or societal
collapse, we may instead trace how communities have managed their landscape, developed new technologies and, when necessary, moved in order to survive. Whilst less dramatic in terms of narrative, this chapter will highlight the ingenuity that characterises humankind, and the instinct for survival. Finally, by viewing the past through the lens of sustainability, we can begin to approach present-day environmental challenges in the same manner and make lessons from the past relevant to the present.
The chapters ‘Introduction’, ‘Community Engagement in the Greater Lumbini Area of Nepal: the Micro-Heritage Case-Study of Dohani’ and ‘Conclusion’ of this book are available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com.
533 pages containing 178 b/w illustrations and 28 maps
Takes a multidisciplinary approach (archaeology, philosophy, anthropology, law), providing an intellectual conversation amongst practitioners of different disciplines in this area
Contains new essays from leading experts from seven different countries (USA, UK, Canada, Australia, India, Sweden and Sri Lanka)
Presents work at the cutting-edge of research into the ethical issues in this area, using recent case-studies and addressing the most urgent current concerns of theorists and practitioners
Excavations have revealed that the Buddha’s path through India had followed old Hindu pilgrimages. And the places at which the Buddha taught are often still now sacred Hindu sites. At the most important sites, Buddhists, Brahmans, scholars and ordinary people talk about what the Buddha taught there, according to their traditions. Naturally the accounts are coloured by the local traditions. These traditions give a much broader spectrum of information than you would get by just listening to the Buddhist tradition.
The landscape at the time of the Buddha was dominated by dense forests, with an occasional and sparsely populated town. Now the forests have largely disappeared and India’s population has expanded enormously. But in spite of the changes in the scenery, this documentary gives a fascinating glimpse of who the Buddha was and how his spiritual and conceptual heritage has continued to exert a strong influence – also outside the circle of those who follow the Buddhist path.
This position relegated archaeologists to the production of architectural styles and chronologies, leaving discussion about the nature of early Buddhists and their practices to others.
More recent studies have begun to promote the value of interdisciplinary archaeological methodologies for the study of a number of key Buddhist sites - most notably at Lumbini – as it provides a broader understanding of the development and character of Buddhism from its earliest beginnings, including excavating beyond the ‘Mauryan Horizon’. Indeed, the archaeology of Buddhism can provide more than the description of individual monuments as it can shed light on the physical character of early ritual practice; it can demonstrate how Buddhism interacted with its contemporary social, economic, and ritual context; and it can shed light on what early Buddhists actually did. Not only do these methods structure and inform current academic narratives, they can also provide frameworks for the conduct of archaeological research at Buddhist heritage sites.
The results from these frameworks not only have the potential to stimulate research discourse but can also contribute to current debates on the preservation and protection of Buddhist heritage and the role of archaeology in the promotion of tourism and sustainable pilgrimage, whilst also highlighting the challenges facing the archaeology of Buddhism in achieving these aims. This paper will reference a number of recent field projects in Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka in order to illustrate the benefits of utilising this powerful nexus between the archaeology of Buddhism and the long term Promotion, Protection and Preservation of Buddhist Culture and Heritage.
Generally accepted by his contemporaries, the site was not subject to further excavation until Dr Debala Mitra’s mission in 1962. Excavating a single trench across the northern fortifications, she concluded that the city was no older than the second century BCE. Confronted by K.M. Srivastava’s discoveries at Piprahawa across the Indian border, many scholars rejected Tilaurakot’s identification as Kapilavastu on account of its apparent lack of antiquity although this claim was later challenged by the findings of Tarananda Mishra and Babu Krishna Rijal.
Having first focused on research at Lumbini under the auspices of UNESCO, a multi-disciplinary team drawn from the Lumbini Development Trust, the Department of Archaeology and Durham, Sterling and Tribhuvan Universities started a new archaeological campaign to reinvestigate Tilaurakot in 2012. Having completed three seasons of geophysical survey, mapping, excavation and laboratory analysis, we are now beginning to understand more about the development and morphology of this complex urban city.
This lecture will present our preliminary findings and consider the antiquity of the site.