History and Technology of Indian Beads: Lecture- XLI (Lecture Series Publication)

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Dr. Tilok Thakuria is a faculty member in the Department of History and Archaeology, NEHU Tura Campus. His areas of academic interests are archaeology of ornaments, Megalithic and Early historic archaeology, ethno-archaeology and archaeology of Northeast India. He has wide experience in archaeological field techniques and participated in excavations and explorations in the many part of the country. He as also excavated a prehistoric site in Meghalaya. Recently, he is working on the Stone Jars of Assam and Southeast Asia. He has presented several research papers in national, international seminar; authored and co-authored several research papers published in journals and edited books.

As per the Memorandum of Association (MoA) prepared more than four decades ago with the set up of the ICHR, the Council has two kinds of objectives: first, to provide funding to individuals and-institutions engaged in historical research and, second to undertake certain academic programmes of its own. The second type of objective the following inter alia: to provide for 'institutional arrangements for training in research methodology'; to develop 'centres for documentation and reference service on historical research'; 'to promote, accelerate and coordinate research in history with special emphasis on areas which have not received adequate attention so far.

Under these broad objectives, the ICHR has opened its three Regional Centres. I am delighted to put on record that the North Eastern Regional Centre of the ICHR in Guwahati has completed more than 20 years since its foundation in 1997. The NERC started the Lecture Series Programme in 2003, and since then 41 lectures have been organised. The lecture series initiated at NERC has been fairly successful in opening a bridge head into new areas of historical research. Therefore, the publication series emanating from the lecture scheme is to some extent a redundant exercise. To my mind it will be more appropriate to congratulate the community of historians in the north-eastern region for having made this effort on the part of ICHR meaningful and effective.

The aim of the publication of lecture series is to facilitate such a dialogue between the regional and the national in historical discourse. In this process these established categories, 'regional' and 'national' may also undergo re-thinking and re-definition. But that as it may, the dialogue needs to be presented to the wider public and, of course, there is also the need to provide a forum for the presentation of new research, specially the output of the younger generation of scholars in the universities and colleges in the north eastern states. That is how I understand the role of the present series of publications. The ICHR will therefore provide this enterprise, along with other activities of the North-Eastern Regional Centre, unstinted support.

The present title 'History and Technology of Indian Beads', I am sure, will be welcomed by the readers and scholars of history. I thank Dr. Tilok Thakuria for this academic endeavour. Also, I thank my colleagues at NERC, Guwahati and Dr. Rajesh Kumar, Director (JP&L) for constantly putting their efforts in conducting the academic activities at Guwahati and moreover for regularly publishing these academic works.