We are all familiar with this common trope: a hospitalised character, recovering from their unconscious state, looking around dazed and confused, and the first question they want answered is, ‘Who am I?’ Archaeology and history answer this question for a community and society at large.These two disciplines are two sides of the same coin – reconstructing the past either through material (in the case of archaeology) or textual (in the case of history) sources. Equally important is the person doing the reconstruction. All reconstructions of the past, be it based on ancient texts or empirical archaeological finds, are interpretations by the archaeologist and historian. Sowmiya Ashok’s book, The Dig, does a great job in situating and contextualising the role of the individuals framing and writing the past – be it through the interpretation of letters carved on rock, couplets composed and passed down through the ages, or artefacts and their stratigraphic contexts. The book places the work archaeologists do in its grounded realities – obtaining permits for fieldwork and excavations, long days hiking and digging trenches, the mundane layout of pottery yards, the prolonged process of post-excavation analyses and report writing, and the commonplace disagreements in competing archaeological interpretations.Sowmiya AshokThe DigHachette, 2026Framed around the pivotal Early Historic site of Keezhadi, Ashok dives into the interconnected and complex nature of reconstructing the past and its hold on identity, nationalism and pride. The book answers the very important questions of why it is still important, pertinent and relevant to continue to study the past in the present – where many simply disregard expert engagement with our collective past. The past was as complex as the present is. Anyone who says otherwise has not actively engaged with the past or has an agenda – something eloquently brought out by Ashok in the book.Emphasising on the ‘tenants’ of archaeology, where context is everything, the situational location of Keezhadi, in the modern-day state of Tamil Nadu, is critical for why the site, the archaeologists and their interpretations are of utmost importance. The broad, general, linear narratives of the past situate the development of India through a series of cultures and dynasties – the Harappan Civilisation, the Mahajanapada period, the Mauryans, the Kushanas, the Guptas and their Golden Age, the Sultanate, the Mughals and finally the British colonial state. This generalisation and over-reliance on particular events and people of the past invisibilises the broad trends and processes of regions beyond the Gangetic basin.What of southern and eastern India? What of the forested landscapes and their peoples? What of the broadly rural communities? Recent investigations and studies, such as the discoveries at Keezhadi and other sites along the Vaigai and Porunai basins, as detailed in the book, help address these broad gaps in our understanding of the past, and help paint a more holistic worldview of our past. Archaeologists, as a community, are trying to rebuild a puzzle. However, we will never have all the pieces, do not know where they fit, and we do not have a reference image of what we are reconstructing! This is why with every new find and discovery, with every new technological invention and development, and with every new interpretation and perspective, our understanding of our past is reimagined. Our reconstructions of the past are always becoming and can never be – like Zeno’s Dichotomy Paradox ad infinitum.As reiterated in the book, and through my own personal experience and fieldwork, the people of Tamil Nadu are the most engaged with their past. Citizen and amateur archaeologists comb the hills and plains in search of unknown inscriptions and hero stones. Popular culture actively derives and inspires from the past, be it books, novels or movies. Television shows and documentaries highlight this interest too – an example of which is the upcoming documentary Porunai, that is being produced by Adhithya Ramachandran Venkatapathy, the Tamil playback singer more popularly known as Hiphop Adhi. This engagement with their past is what thrust Keezhadi both into regional and national fame, drawing up on it eyes from all sectors of society and polity.The Tamil Nadu State Department of Archaeology is one of the best funded and supported departments of archaeology, with the weight of the state behind it. At a time when discussions related to opening up archaeology to private funding is ongoing, the contributions of the TNSDA emphasise how state-funded research investigations can produce important outcomes. We can endlessly debate on the reasons and interpretations, but it is necessary to first go out to the fields and collect the relevant information. Many sites and landscapes, and their rich archaeological records will eventually be invisibilised to the forces of time, progress and development. Having records of these contexts, sites, and localities, before they are lost will help fill in the blanks in our reconstruction of the past.Sowmiya Ashok. Photo: Priyadarshini RavichandranAshok’s writing style and first-person point of view makes the work engaging to both the initiated and general readers, and the book does a great job in demystifying the science and jargon of archaeology. The book actively explains questions related to how archaeologists find sites and come to conclusions of where to dig, what ancient DNA and archaeogenetics encompass, and how comparative analyses and connections between sites spread sometimes all over the globe, are made. Weaving together the different threads of finds from various sites, modern-day people and their stories, and the role that science is more increasingly playing in our understanding of the past, the book situates the interdisciplinary nature of archaeology and history – bring to light the tension amongst the various people who are literally writing our past.We are all equal stakeholders in this collective past, and the book enables us to learn how to use the various tools available to us to better understand our own stories – of who we are, and where we come from. It has always been the people who are centre-stage in our reconstruction of the past – be it the actors who lived in those ancient times, leaving behind both the material and textual sources we depend on in the present, or the archaeologists and historians who interpret the signs that they have left behind. After all, as Edward Augustus Freeman opined all the way back in 1879, history is past politics, and politics is present history (ironically, this phrase has been wrongly ascribed to Freeman’s contemporary Sir John Robert Seeley) – and Ashok does a wonderful job in highlighting this through her debut book.Akash Srinvas is the Assistant Director of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Archaeological Research at Ashoka University. He is a prehistoric archaeologist with experience in various sites across India, Italy, Spain, Germany and Tanzania. He is also the co-host of the podcast Chippin’ Away.