RECENT TRENDS IN INDIAN ARCHAEOLOGY 1 priorities to problems framed on their basis, with relevance to society at large, and not for blatant political considerations. Archaeology is a fast growing scientific discipline and demands academic rigour, expertise and professional ethics. Non-professional zeal distorts the evidence and sometimes even leads to forgeries. Too much of religiosity is also dangerous. Surely only academics with the narrowest minds car) lend support to the kind of revivalist forces and ideologies we have se^n at work for quite some time in India A Archaeology in India is seriously in danger at the hands of commercially and politically motivated non-professional zealots. It has to be saved and salvaged in the interest of the scientific understanding of our past. What is particularly lagging behind ih Indian archaeology today is a comprehension of the process of culture change. Just a reconstruction of regional ceramic cultures, their sequences and casual correlation with ecological and environmental factors is not enough. What is needed is to have a holistic and relative view of culture, to understand the living conditions of the functional groups and classes and the social and economic relationships between groups and classes. Last but not the least, it is also necessary to view culture in its world historical context.