Vasant Shinde (archaeologist)

• Adjunct Professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, IIC Campus, Bangalore • Director General, National Maritime Heritage Complex, Gandhinagar • Former Professor and Vice-Chancellor at the Deccan College, Post-Graduate and Research Institute, Deemed University, Pune ==Excavations==

In the 1980s-1990s Shinde conducted excavations at the Tapti basin in Maharashtra. From 2011 to 2016 Shinde conducted excavations at the Indus Valley Civilisation site of Rakhigarhi. According to Shinde, Rakhigarhi was larger than Mohenjo-daro, ==Rakhigarhi DNA==

Research findings According to Avikunthak, Shinde was the first archaeologist who noticed the value of genetic research in the debate on the origins of Indo-Aryan culture in India. Initially working together with Seoul National University College of Medicine, Shinde was the main author on the long-awaited 2019 paper "An Ancient Harappan Genome Lacks Ancestry from Steppe Pastoralists or Iranian Farmers," co-authored by David Reich, and wearing his "unmistakable stamp." The paper concluded that the IVC-people lacked ancestry from Anatolia and the steppes, in line with the Indo-Aryan migration theory, which argues that the Indo-Aryan Vedic people migrated into South Asia after the height of the Indus Valley Civilisation, in the period of ca. 1900-1500 BCE. The press note stated that the research It also stated that the research Several media outlets followed Shinde's primer, and presented the study as a rebuttal of the established Indo-Aryan migration theory, confusing it with Mortimer Wheeler's outdated proposal, and ignoring the actual contents and conclusions of the study. At the press conference held at September 6, 2019 to explain the findings, Vasant Shinde and Niraj Rai publicly endorsed the Out of India theory, rejecting the idea that the Vedic people had migrated into South Asia at the time of the decline of the Harappan civilisation. As Shinde stated, "the Vedic era that followed [the IVC] was a fully indigenous period with some external contact." According to journalist Hartosh Singh Bal, "the claim that the Harappans were the Vedic people "betrays the very research that underlies the two papers. To believe this, the authors would have to discredit their own papers." During 2020 Shinde further propagated his interpretation of the archaeogenetic data, craniofacial reconstruction of skeletal remains, and material archaeological remains that "the Harappans moved westward - propagating the "Out of India theory"- a return to the Hindutva claim of the Vedic Aryan, now invoking aDNA data as arsenal." ==Project advise==

In 2022 Shinde advised Ministry of Culture Secretary Govind Mohan on a project to study the genetic history of India's population. In response, the Ministry of Culture issued a statement "refuting the report and said that it has no intention of conducting studies of racial purity in the country." In an open letter, "[over] a 100 leading biologists, historians, anthropologists and intellectuals" protested against the plan, warning that the term "race" is a social construct with unwarranted implications. ==Works==

• Early Settlements in the Central Tapi Basin • Chalcolithic South Asia: Aspects of Crafts and Technologies • Cultural Heritage of South Asia and Beyond Recent Perspective • Excavations at Gilund: The Artifacts and Other Studies • 2017. Ancient Indian Knowledge System : Archaeological Perspective • 2022. Bharatiya Knowledge Systems • 2023: New Perspectives on the Harappan Culture in Light of Recent Excavations at Rakhigarhi: 2011–2017, Volume 1: Bioarchaeological Research on the Rakhigarhi Necropolis (editor, together with Dong Hoon Shin), Archaeopress Publishing Ltd. ==See also==