Ancestral Sites and Neolithic Evidence

Cecile A. Mawlong

North-Eastern Hill University, India; camawlong@gmail.com

The notion of ancestral sites among the Khasi people of Meghalaya is vividly expressed in their oral narratives. Today these sites have been transformed into sacred spaces where annual rituals and pilgrimages are held. In recent decades, archaeological evidence is surfacing with excavation revealing the occupation of some sites that goes back to the 12th millennium BCE, opening an interesting area of research linking the relations between oral narratives and archaeological evidence. This paper explores this connection in an attempt to associate the tangible evidence with the occupation of the Austro-Asiatic speaking Khasi community in Northeast India.