South Asian Archaeology

Museum building in colonies

by Suresh Pillai

it is the second part of my essay on Museumisatiom

Influence of the history of archaeological thought in South Asia on the understanding of ancient states and empires, including the prevalence of Colonial and Orientalist modes of interpretation.

by Seetal Gahir

A simulation of the Neolithic transition in the Indus valley

by Carsten Lemmen

Co-authored with Aurangzeb Khan, accepted for publication in AGU monograph series (Past climates, civilizations, and landscapes)

The Indus Valley Civilization (IVC) was one of the first great civilizations in prehistory. This bronze age... more The Indus Valley Civilization (IVC) was one of the first great civilizations in prehistory. This bronze age civilization flourished from the end of the fourth millennium BC. It disintegrated during the second millennium BC; despite much research effort, this decline is not well understood. Less research has been devoted to the emergence of the IVC, which shows continuous cultural precursors since at least the seventh millennium BC. To understand the decline, we believe it is necessary to investigate the rise of the IVC, i.e., the establishment of agriculture and livestock, dense populations and technological developments 7000--3000 BC. Although much archaeologically typed information is available, our capability to investigate the system is hindered by poorly resolved chronology, and by a lack of field work in the intermediate areas between the Indus valley and Mesopotamia. We thus employ a complementary numerical simulation to develop a consistent picture of technology, agropastoralism and population developments in the IVC domain. Results from this Global Land Use and technological Evolution Simulator show that there is (1) fair agreement between the simulated timing of the agricultural transition and radiocarbon dates from early agricultural sites, but the transition is simulated first in India then Pakistan; (2) an independent agropastoralism developing on the Indian subcontinent; and (3) a positive relationship between archeological artifact richness and simulated population density which remains to be quantified.

Guest Editorial: The Toba volcanic super-eruption of 74,000 years ago: Climate change, environments, and evolving humans

by Michael Petraglia

Bricks point to primarily social causes of Harappan decline

by Aurangzeb Khan

Submitted to Antiquity in Dec 2011.

The Indus Valley Culture (IVC), often denoted by its major city Harappa, spanned almost two millennia from 3300 to... more The Indus Valley Culture (IVC), often denoted by its major city Harappa, spanned almost two millennia from 3300 to 1300 BC. Trade connections, the size of the cities and its technological advancements characterise the IVC as one of the first great civilisations in history. Its slow decline is evident in the disintegration of urban centres starting from 1900 BC and presents a mystery to archaeological research. Diverse causes have been suggested for this decline and include climatic shifts, changes of river pathways, flood events, invasion or war.
We reconsider published hypotheses and integrate archaeological and palaeoenvironmental evidence to obtain a synoptic view on the decline dynamics. We find that the
observed abandonment of urban areas can be best explained by a combination of factors involving invasive nomads from central Asia, loss of IVC’s social coherence, skills and technology, and subsequent decreased resilience to environmental changes. Our analysis suggests that not aridity but flooding was the trigger of decline while organisational failure was the prime mover.

Inferring Aspects of Acheulean Sociality and Cognition from Lithic Technology

by Michael Petraglia

Emulation at the edge of empire: the adoption of non-local vessel forms in the NWFP, Pakistan during the mid-late 1st millennium BC

by Peter Magee

Gandhāran Studies, Vol. 2 2010.

Lithic technology and social transformations in the South Indian Neolithic: The evidence from Sanganakallu–Kupgal

by Michael Petraglia

Silence before sedentism and the advent of cash-crops: A revised summary of early agriculture in South Asia from plant domestication to the development of political economies (with an excursus on the problem of semantic shift among millets and rice)

by Dorian Fuller

In T. OSada (ed.) Linguistics, Archaeology and the Human Past. Delhi: Manohar. Pp. 147-187. [ISBN: 978-81-7304-799-2]

The Achaemenid Empire In South Asia and Recent Excavations In Akra In Northwest Pakistan

by Peter Magee

Lithic technology and social transformations in the South Indian Neolithic: The evidence from Sanganakallu–Kupgal

by Dorian Fuller

Shipton, Ceri, Michael Petraglia, Jinu Koshy, Janardhana Bora, Adam Brumm, Nicole Boivin, Ravi Korisettar, Roberto Risch, Dorian Fuller (2012)  Journal of Anthropological Archaeology

Here we examine patterns in stone tool technology among Mesolithic, Neolithic and Iron Age localities in the... more Here we examine patterns in stone tool technology among Mesolithic, Neolithic and Iron Age localities in the Sanganakallu–Kupgal site complex, Bellary District, Karnataka, South India. Statistical tests are used to compare proportions of raw materials and artefact types, and to compare central tendencies in metric variables taken on flakes and tools. Lithic-related findings support the inference of at least two distinct technological and economic groups at Sanganakallu–Kupgal, a microlith-focused foraging society on the one hand, and on the other, an agricultural society whose lithic technologies centred upon the production of pressure bladelets and dolerite edge-ground axes. Evidence for continuity in lithic technological processes through time may reflect indigenous processes of development, and a degree of continuity from the Mesolithic through to the Neolithic period. Lithic production appears to have become a specialised and spatially segregated activity by the terminal Neolithic and early Iron Age, supporting suggestions for the emergence of an increasingly complex economy and political hierarchy.

Holocene Aridification of India

by Dorian Fuller

Ponton, C., L. Giosan, T. I. Eglinton, D. Fuller, J. E. Johnson, P. Kumar, and T. S. Collett (2012). Holocene Aridification of India. Geophysical Research Letters,

Spanning a latitudinal range typical for deserts, the Indian peninsula is fertile instead and sustains over a billion... more Spanning a latitudinal range typical for deserts, the Indian peninsula is fertile instead and sustains over a billion people through monsoonal rains. Despite the strong link between climate and society, our knowledge of the long-term monsoon variability is incomplete over the Indian subcontinent. Here we reconstruct the Holocene paleoclimate in the core monsoon zone (CMZ) of the Indian peninsula using a sediment core recovered offshore from the mouth of Godavari River. Carbon isotopes of sedimentary leaf waxes provide an integrated and regionally extensive record of the flora in the CMZ and document a gradual increase in aridity-adapted vegetation from ~4,000 until 1,700 years ago followed by the persistence of aridity-adapted plants after that. The oxygen isotopic composition of planktonic foraminifer Globigerinoides ruber detects unprecedented high salinity events in the Bay of Bengal over the last 3,000 years, and especially after 1,700 years ago, which suggest that the CMZ aridification intensified in the late Holocene through a series of sub-millennial dry episodes. Cultural changes occurred across the Indian subcontinent as the climate became more arid after ~4,000 years. Sedentary agriculture took hold in the drying central and south India, while the urban Harappan civilization collapsed in the already arid Indus basin. The establishment of a more variable hydroclimate over the last ca. 1,700 years may have led to the rapid proliferation of water-conservation technology in south India.

‘Luminescence dating of brick stupas: application to the hinterland of Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka’

by Keir Strickland

Published in Antiquity 2012 (in press).

Co-authored with Bailiff, I.K., Lacey, H.R., Coningham, R.A.E., Gunawardhana, P., Adikari, G., Davis, C.E., & Manuel, M.J.

Mind the Gap: The chronology of Painted Grey Ware and the prelude to Early Historic urbanism in northern south Asia

by Peter Magee

Histories, Epigraphy and Authority: Aehaemenid and Indigenous Control in Pakistan in the 1st millennium BC

by Peter Magee

U-Pb zircon dating evidence for a Pleistocene Sarasvati River and capture of the Yamuna River

by Dorian Fuller

Peter D. Clift, Andrew Carter, Liviu Giosan, Julie Durcan, Geoff A.T. Duller, Mark G. Macklin, Anwar Alizai, Ali R. Tabrez, Mohammed Danish, Sam VanLaningham and Dorian Q. Fuller. Published in journal Geology.

The Harappan Culture, one of the oldest known urban civilizations, thrived on the northwest edge of the Thar Desert... more The Harappan Culture, one of the oldest known urban civilizations, thrived on the northwest edge of the Thar Desert (India and Pakistan) between 3200 and 1900 BCE. Its demise has been linked to rapid weakening of the summer monsoon at this time, yet reorganization of rivers may also have played a role. We sampled subsurface channel sand bodies predating ca. 4.0 ka and used U-Pb dating of zircon sand grains to constrain their provenance through comparison with the established character of modern river sands. Samples from close to archaeological sites to the north of the desert show little affinity with the Ghaggar-Hakra, the presumed source of the channels. Instead, we see at least two groups of sediments, showing similarities both to the Beas River in the west and to the Yamuna and Sutlej Rivers in the east. The channels were active until after 4.5 ka and were covered by dunes before 1.4 ka, although loss of the Yamuna from the Indus likely occurred as early as 49 ka and no later than 10 ka. Capture of the Yamuna to the east and the Sutlej to the north rerouted water away from the area of the Harappan centers, but this change significantly predated their final collapse

Pathways to Asian Civilizations: Tracing the Origins and Spread of Rice and Rice Cultures

by Dorian Fuller

Rice [journal], special issue arising from the Cornell "Rice and Language" conference in September. Rice 4 (3-4): 78-92

Modern genetics, ecology and archaeology are combined to reconstruct the domestication and diversification of rice.... more Modern genetics, ecology and archaeology are combined to reconstruct the domestication and diversification of rice. Early rice cultivation followed two pathways towards domestication in India and China, with selection for domestication traits in early Yangtze japonica and a non-domestication feedback system inferred for ‘proto-indica’. The protracted domestication process finished around 6,500–6,000 years ago in China and about two millennia later in India, when hybridization with Chinese rice took place. Subsequently farming populations grew and expanded by migration and incorporation of pre-existing populations. These expansions can be linked to hypothetical language family dispersal models, including dispersal from China southwards by the Sino-Tibetan and Austronesian groups. In South Asia much dispersal of rice took place after Indo-Aryan and Dravidian speakers adopted rice from speakers of lost languages of northern India.

The political economy of iron in Late Prehistoric South India

by Matthew Gallon

In 2003 and 2005 the Early Historic Landscapes of the Tungabhadra Corridor project (EHLTC), co-directed by the... more In 2003 and 2005 the Early Historic Landscapes of the Tungabhadra Corridor project (EHLTC), co-directed by the Karnataka Department of Archaeology and Museums, Kathleen Morrison and Carla Sinopoli, excavated Late Prehistoric habitation and megalithic contexts at the settlement of Kadebakele, located in the Bellary District of northern Karnataka. The project recovered 37 metal objects; 32 of which are made of iron. In order to better understand the political economy of iron at both the site and regional level, I compare these iron objects and their depositional contexts at Kadebakele with those from Brahmagiri (Wheeler 1947) and Maski (Thapar 1957), contemporaneous sites located within 120 km of Kadebakele. The distribution of production debris provides evidence that the control of iron production provided a new means for constructing socio-economic inequalities during the South Indian Late Prehistoric.

rev 2009 Deloche, studies on Fortifications of India

by paul yule

This book is an excellent overview up to the 18th century of defensive architecture in terms of architectural history.

Review of J. Deloche, Studies on Fortifications in India (Pondicherry 2007), in: Asiatische Studien 63.2, 2009, 477–482 Review of J. Deloche, Studies on Fortifications in India (Pondicherry 2007), in: Asiatische Studien 63.2, 2009, 477–482

Bricks point to primarily social causes of Harappan decline

by Carsten Lemmen

Rejected manuscript, have to go back to the literature.... Suggestions welcome.

The Indus Valley Culture (IVC), often denoted by its major city Harappa, spanned almost two millennia from 3300 to... more The Indus Valley Culture (IVC), often denoted by its major city Harappa, spanned almost two millennia from 3300 to 1300 BC. Trade connections, the size of the cities and its technological advancements characterise the IVC as one of the first great civilisations in history. Its slow decline is evident in the disintegration of urban centres starting from 1900 BC and presents a mystery to archaeological research. Diverse causes have been suggested for this decline and include climatic shifts, changes of river pathways, flood events, invasion or war. We reconsider published hypotheses and integrate archaeological and palaeoenvironmental evidence to obtain a synoptic view on the decline dynamics. We find that the observed abandonment of urban areas can be best explained by a combination of factors involving invasive nomads from central Asia, loss of IVC's social coherence, skills and technology, and subsequent decreased resilience to environmental changes. Our analysis suggests that not aridity but flooding was the trigger of decline while organisational failure was the prime mover.