[Pramāṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/) › [Studies](https://indike.org/pramana/ins) › [Reference works](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.reference) › [An Encyclopaedia of Indian Archaeology](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.reference.ghosh-1989) › v1.c5.2 # An Encyclopaedia of Indian Archaeology v1.c5.2 An Encyclopaedia of Indian Archaeology v1.c5.2 - **Language:** English ### [v1.c5.2](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.reference.ghosh-1989.v1.c5.2) The growth of archaeology in India was essentially the product of corresponding developments in Europe. Earlier concealed in the swaddling clothes of the antiquarianism and dilettantism of the last quarter of the eighteenth century, which contributed to the founding of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1784, archaeology obtained formal, or official recognition in 1861, when Alexander Cunningham was appointed to undertake a systematic investigation of ancient and medieval monuments and sites in India. Prehistoric archaeology could similarly be assigned one of its initial points in January 1860, when H.P. Le. Mesurier of the East Indian Railway discovered a large number of neoliths in the valley of the Tosney river. In 1863, not long after Boucher de Perthes’ significant discovery of worked flints in the Somme valley in France, Robert Bruce Foote of the Geological Survey of India unearthed a genuine palaeolith from a small ballast-pit at Pallavaram, near Madras. More discoveries followed with the result that a beginning of the prehistoric studies in India was made. - [Previous: v1.c5.1](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.reference.ghosh-1989.v1.c5.1) - [Next: v1.c5.3](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.reference.ghosh-1989.v1.c5.3) - [Up: v1.c5](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.reference.ghosh-1989.v1.c5) --- Source: [https://indike.org/pramana/ins.reference.ghosh-1989.v1.c5.2](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.reference.ghosh-1989.v1.c5.2) · Pramāṇa