What was John Marshall's role in the ASI?

Director-General

John Marshall's appointment as Director-General of the ASI brought about a significant shift in Indian archaeology. As the first professional archaeologist to work in India, Marshall leveraged his experience from excavations in Greece and Crete. While he shared an interest in remarkable discoveries with Cunningham, Marshall was equally dedicated to uncovering patterns of everyday life.

Marshall introduced a new excavation approach by employing regular horizontal units uniformly measured across the mound, disregarding the stratigraphy of the site. This approach resulted in the grouping of all artifacts retrieved from the same unit, regardless of their original stratigraphic layers. Unfortunately, this method caused the loss of valuable contextual information associated with these finds.