Careers in Archaeological Chemistry
- Feb 3
- 9 min read
S. Subbaraman
Superintending Archaeological Chemist (retd.),
Archaeological Survey of India,
Padma Shree Awardee, 2023
S. Subbaraman is a retired Superintending Archaeological Chemist, who worked with the Archaeological Survey of India (A.S.I.). He has worked with the A.S.I., in the conversation of mural paintings in Ajanta and Lepakshi, along with the conversation of Belur, Halebidu temples.
Subbaraman is credited for devising a special technique for the separation of two layers of mural paintings in the Brihadeeshwara temple, Thanjavur. In 1977, he headed a 15-member team to Bamiyan, Afghanistan, when the conservation project of the two gigantic Budha statues was completed and the monuments formally handed over to the Afghan government.
He has also been a part of the A.S.I. team to Angkor Wat, Cambodia, for detailed study and preparation of project report for the conservation of the monument and prepared the chemical conservation part of the report. Post retirement, he has been engaged in many consultancy and conservation work. From 1993 to 2006, he worked as the Director of INTACH Chitrakalaparishath Art Conservation Centre, Bengaluru.
Subbaraman has many honours and awards his credit. As part of the celebration of the 150th anniversary of A.S.I., he was honoured by the Governor of Karnataka, along with eight other eminent Arachaelogists. The Government of India has also conferred him with the Padma Shree in March 2023, for his contributions.
At the age of 96, Subbaraman is not only a voracious reader, but continues to keep up with the latest trends such as podcasts, pop-culture and maintains an active social media presence.
1. Was there a specific lesson or value instilled by your teachers that you carried forward in your professional life?
I could observe the dedication and sincerity that my school teachers brought to their work. This must have seeped into my system and made me follow their example in my own professional life. I always felt that whatever you do, you must try to give your one hundred percent to it. Another thing is honesty and integrity. For instance, even while working in out-of-the-way places in A.S.I., without any supervision, I never missed a single working day. My boss had the disconcerting habit of coming on inspection visits completely unannounced. But he never found me absent from the work site on a single occasion.
While working on precious heritage sites like the Ajanta paintings as well as in other places, I could observe that technical knowledge alone is not sufficient to successfully treat such great works of art. Knowledge of the chemicals and skill in the procedures are all important. But what is even more important is a certain artistic sensibility and a feel for the paintings.
2. What role did teaching and mentoring play during your time in A.S.I. and other institutions?
Before I joined A.S.I., I worked for about three years in the King Institute, Madras (now Chennai) during 1952-54, doing analysis of foods and drugs and, during that period, benefited very much from the guidance of some brilliant senior colleagues. I was also lucky to be allotted different kinds of work in the period that I was there and was saved from the fate of getting into a rut and ending up doing the same workday in and day out.
After I was recruited to the Chemistry Branch of A.S.I. by a well-known Archaeological chemist and a pioneer in the scientific examination of our ancient mural paintings, he was the dominating presence but, being a very reticent person, did not play much of a teaching role to his subordinates. Therefore, it was a case of self-learning through the application of my knowledge of Chemistry and Archaeology to the hands-on experience acquired while working in important monuments like Ajanta.
3. How do you inspire young Archaeologists to develop a deeper appreciation for cultural heritage and its preservation?
I was fortunate in getting the opportunity to teach younger Archaeologists during the latter part of my career. A.S.I. has an annual training program in conservation for the students of the Institute of Archaeology of A.S.I., younger officers of A.S.I. and officers from the departments of Archaeology of different states. Part of the program was structural conservation, which Engineers of A.S.I. would conduct and the other part was chemical conservation, which I was asked to conduct for a number of years. The course consisted of studying the various factors causing the deterioration of monuments and objects and, steps for conserving them, including steps for preventing future deterioration as much as possible. During the conduct of these courses, I could react with a number of young and eager people deeply interested in the conservation of our heritage. I find that teaching methods have a big role in inspiring younger people and it helps if they already have an inclination towards the subject.
4. What teaching methods or practices have you found most effective in training future Archaeologists?
Recently, I was invited to visit a summer camp being conducted by a school at Mysore, who adopt modern teaching methods as opposed to the conventional classroom technique. The students were in the 8 to 12-year-old age group. I was asked to speak to them about my experiences in A.S.I. in the field of heritage conservation. This proved to be an exhilarating experience for me. The teachers had beforehand arranged for a mock excavation experience for the students. They had placed the objects at different levels inside the ground and asked them to find the objects by careful digging and explaining to them that the objects found at deeper levels were older than those found at the upper levels. This gave them a basic idea of what archeological excavation means, and they also experienced the thrill of finding objects used by people in the past, which helped us in understanding their way of life and their culture.
Another very good thing that the teachers had done was to ask the students to bring all types of old objects from their homes and put up an exhibition of them. When I was taken around this exhibition, the eagerness of those young students and the palpable pride in showing me the objects that belonged to their grandfather or grandmother, as the case may be, was quite heart-warming.
Later, when I spoke to them about my experiences in monuments in a simple language, they listened with rapt attention and some of them asked very pertinent questions. I could see how really interested these young boys and girls were in the subject.
For more mature students with degrees in Ancient History or Archeology, it would be helpful to attend on-going excavations being conducted by A.S.I. or other agencies like universities. Visits to museums are of course educative for everyone but, for future Archaeologists, a detailed study of the objects on historical and stylistic grounds would be helpful in understanding the development of art techniques and modes of fabrication. For budding epigraphists, studying old scripts would stand them in good stead in trying to decipher old inscriptions found in monuments all over the country, which is a powerful tool in studying the past.
Subbaraman receiving the Padma Shri from the Indian President,
Droupadi Murmu
Subbaraman greeting the then Foreign Minister of India,
Atal Bihari Vajpayee
5. What challenges have you faced in conveying the importance of conservation to a younger audience, and how have you overcome them?
I have not had the chance to speak to an audience who needed to be educated about the importance of conservation. The students I taught were already aware of it. But my challenge was to make students, who were mostly students of the humanities, like history, understand the science behind the methods used for conserving the monuments and museum objects. This had to be done in a way that even students without a science background could follow. One should not make the lectures too technical, which would go over their heads; at the same time, no essential points can be omitted, which would make the lesson inadequate. A balance has to be struck, and the concepts and procedures had to be explained to the students in as clear a way as possible. This I was able to do. I made good use of the blackboard. I used to write the essential points, including the names of chemicals, etc. on the board, after first speaking about them. And, I always invited questions freely so that they could clear their doubts then and there. We also conducted practical demonstrations which went a long way in helping the students understand the methods.
6. How do you ensure that your work in archaeology and conservation leaves a lasting impact on the next generation of professionals?
One’s work should speak for itself. It is generally made known to other professionals through publications. I could never write a technical book on conservation techniques because my working life was so busy with actual conservation projects that there was not much time to sit down and write. But recently, the Mythic Society of Bangalore were kind enough to publish my autobiography ‘Ajanta to Angkor Wat’ which contains enough information about the methods that I used in different monuments. Besides this, I have written a number of articles in journals and presented papers at conferences. In 1991, the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, who were about to launch a project ‘Application of Science and Technology to the conservation of heritage’ asked several experts to write state of the art reports on the conservation of different types of objects. Among the reports submitted, my report on the ‘Conservation of mural paintings’ was selected for printing and the printed report with illustrations, were circulated among scientists of various laboratories who attended meetings connected with the project.
Subbaraman’s autobiography, ‘Ajanta to Angkor Wat’ My work of the separation of two layers of old mural paintings, one superimposed over the other, in the Brihadeeshwara Temple, Thanjavur, received lot of notice in the press and it attracted even international attention. The Australian Broadcasting corporation sent a team to Thanjavur to film this process and later aired in their TV program ‘Beyond 2000’, the purpose of which was to highlight the latest advances in different fields. All this might have left some impress on workers who followed me. 7. What advice would you give school teachers looking to inspire students about history and archeology as a field of study? Usually, students are put off if history is simply presented as a series of dates to be remembered and a collection of events such as wars that took place in the past[RG1] . My teacher taught us history through telling a series of interesting stories. He never opened a book in class. He used to sit relaxed and tell us one fascinating story after the other. After this, there was no difficulty for us in retaining what he had taught us. I was always interested in what happened in the past. For instance, I used to question my father about what my grandfather, great grandfather, etc. did and how they lived. And my teacher’s teaching methods further strengthened my interest in history.
I would advise teachers to follow some such methods to make history as interesting as possible to students. Taking them to nearby monuments and explaining to them the architecture as well as about who built that monument and under what circumstances, etc., would arouse the interest of the students. Visits to museums will serve the same purpose. And students must be taught the importance of Archaeology which provides the source material for the reconstruction of history.
8. In what ways do you believe education, especially in schools, can play a role in fostering respect for cultural heritage among children?
As is often said, ours is the only ancient civilization in the world that has remained alive for the past 5000 years, others like those of Egypt and Mesopotamia having disappeared completely.
Indians were engaged in maritime trade from as early as the Indus Valley Civilization (2500 B.C.E.) and, as a result, India was known as a rich country from early on. It was this that attracted Europeans like the Portuguese and the Dutch, etc. to travel to India by sea. Even when the British started acquiring political power in the 18th century, India is said to have had 27% of the world’s GDP, making it the second richest country in the world (by the time they left in 1947, it became one of the poorest countries in the world and that is another matter).
Indian culture spread through Sri Lanka and the Southeast Asian countries like Indonesia, Thailand and Cambodia from the early part of the Christian era and our colonisation was always cultural, never through military conquest.
It is also well-known that we have a very rich cultural heritage like wonderful ancient monuments spread all over the country, great art heritage in the form of stone and metal sculpture and, mural paintings right from Ajanta and the Pallava and Chola paintings in south India as well as medieval paintings in many temples in Tamil Nadu and Kerala and palaces in Central India.
We have rich literature, starting from Sanskrit, Pali and Prakrit of older times right through the modern era in various regional languages, Tamil literature going back to the 2nd century C.E., Kannada to the 9th and Telugu to the 11th centuries. Sanskrit has the most systematic grammar of any language in the world, as seen in the Ashtadhyayi of Panini, who lived around 500 B.C.E. It has given us immortal poets like Kalidasa, Bhavabhuti and others.
There have been great astronomers and mathematicians like Aryabhata (4th century), Bhaskara (9th century) and others and India made momentous contributions to Mathematics such as the numerals and the concept of zero and this knowledge was carried to the west by the Arabs in the 9th century, which was later translated to Greek and Latin. There have been great physicians and surgeons like Charaka and Sushruta.
The above is a brief glimpse of the glorious past of this country, which teachers have to transmit to young students at a school level to make them aware of their rich roots, which awareness is essential for building a bright future for the country. Knowing who we are and all that we have achieved in the past will inculcate pride in the young minds and bolster their confidence in achieving great things themselves.