Catherine Jarrige, nee Catherine Klein (born 27 January 1942),
is a retired French archaeologist, best known for co-leading the discovery of
Mehrgarh
Mehrgarh is a Neolithic archaeological site situated on the Kacchi Plain of Balochistan, Pakistan, Balochistan in Pakistan. It is located near the Bolan Pass, to the west of the Indus River and between the modern-day Pakistani cities of Quetta, ...
, a Neolithic site in
Balochistan, Pakistan
Balochistan (; ; , ) is a province of Pakistan. Located in the southwestern region of the country, Balochistan is the largest province of Pakistan by land area but is the least populated one. It is bordered by the Pakistani provinces of Khybe ...
.
Career
Jarrige began working in Balochistan in 1964.
She lived with her husband,
Jean-François Jarrige
Jean-François Jarrige (5 August 1940, Lourdes – 18 November 2014, Paris) was a French archaeologist specializing in South Asian archaeology and Sindhology. He held a doctorate from the University of Paris in oriental archaeology. He carried ou ...
, in
Lucknow, India from 1967 until 1969.
In 1974, Jarrige and her husband co-led the team that discovered Mehrgarh.
Jarrige worked at Mehrgarh between December and March each year from 1975 until 1985, and from 1997 until 2000.
During this time, Jarrige and her coworkers forged both professional and emotional connections with nearby villagers.
They delayed their work in 2001, due to fighting in neighboring
Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. It is bordered by Pakistan to the Durand Line, east and south, Iran to the Afghanistan–Iran borde ...
, and were unable to permanently return to the site due to increased conflict due to inter-tribal hostilities, which led to looting and destruction of the site and displacement of the local people whom they had worked with.
In the mid-2000s, Jarrige worked at a site near
Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan.
Jarrige also worked at and wrote about
Nausharo, a
Harappan period site in Balochistan.
Jarrige was particularly interested in the human figurines unearthed at the sites she worked at. She found that the older figurines tended to be of uncertain gender, with later figurines increasingly differentiating male or female physical characteristics.
Male figurines ultimately made up 85% of the figurines found, with some holding infants, a subversion of "the usual perception of figurines serving as fertility icons"; she also described such figurines being found at Nausharo. Some of the youngest female figurines sported elaborate hairstyles and ornamentation.
Personal life
Jarrige married fellow archaeologist
Jean-Francois Jarrige in 1966.
The couple had two daughters, who accompanied their parents to Mehrgarh during the excavation season.
Publications
* ''Mehrgarh: Field Reports, 1974-1985, from Neolithic Times to the Indus Civilization : the Reports of Eleven Seasons of Excavations in Kachi District, Balochistan by the French Archaeological Mission to Pakista''n (1995)
Articles
* ''Une tête d'éléphant en terre cuite de Nausharo (Pakistan)'' (1992)
* ''The figurines of the first farmers at Mehrgarh and their offshoots'' (2008)
Chapters
* ''Les figurines humaines au Baluchistan'' (1988)
Co-author
* ''Sickles and Harvesting Motions in Baluchistan (Pakistan)'' (1987)
* ''Early Neolithic tradition of dentistry'' (2006)
* ''Mehrgarh. Neolithic Period - Seasons 1997-2000: Pakistan'' (2013)
Editor
* ''South Asian archaeology, 1989 : papers from the Tenth International Conference of South Asian Archaeologists in Western Europe, Musée national des arts asiatiques-Guimet, Paris, France, 3–7 July 1989'' (1992)
[{{Cite book , url=https://library.metmuseum.org:444/record=b1158922~S1 , title=South Asian archaeology, 1989 : papers from the Tenth International Conference of South Asian Archaeologists in Western Europe, Musée national des arts asiatiques-Guimet, Paris, France, 3-7 July 1989 , publisher=Prehistory Press , year=1992 , location=Madison, Wisconsin]
References
1942 births
Living people
20th-century French archaeologists
20th-century French women
French women archaeologists