Ethnoarchaeology and Mnemonic Landscapes in Saitual District, Mizoram, India

Amrita Sarkar

This paper examines how megaliths, carved stones, caves and rock shelters in Saitual district, Mizoram function as a distributed mnemonic infrastructure through which biography, status, power, and moral causation are repeatedly authored and re-authored. It advances two headline research questions: (1) How do megaliths and relief motifs function as public credentialing of achievement, wealth, gendered mourning, and lineage? (2) How should archaeology interpret narrative plurality? By positioning narrative variability as a key entry point for landscape archaeology, this paper argues that the cultural material finds from Saitual are not just relics of the past, but tools through which the community actively reproduces history and moral causation. By situating the finds from Saitual within broader discussions of ethnoarchaeology, memory studies, and landscape archaeology, the paper develops an open-ended interpretive framework that foregrounds dialogue between archaeology and lived tradition.