Srinagar, Oct. 3 -- Mist settles on the gravel terraces of the Narmada, and a dozen people begin their morning. One man strikes a quartzite cobble until a cleaver emerges, then tests its weight against his palm. Women dig wild yams and bitter tubers with fire-hardened sticks and strip ripe berries into folded bark. A tracker bends over hoofprints in wet silt and judges the stride of a wild bovid, while two children gather acacia twigs within an elder's reach. By dusk a brushwood windbreak guards a small hearth, and embers brighten as the dark cools.

The scene is a reconstruction, and the line between reconstruction and evidence decides how much of it we can believe.

Archaeology demonstrates the tangible: the composition of a blade, butc...