Exploring South Asian Past: Prof. K. Paddayya Festschrift

Contents: Foreword. Preface. 1. Introduction: Facets of South Asian Past from Pluralistic Perspectives/V. Selvakumar, S.K. Aruni and Hemant Dave. 2. Celt Grinding Sites in Raichur: The Economy of Dolerite Tool Production in Southern Neolithic Culture/R. Arjun. 3. Rise of Early Urban Centres in Karnataka: an Appraisal/S.K. Aruni. 4. Re-thinking Heritage: Creating a New Sense of the Past? Bishnupriya Basak. 5. Old World links of Ancient Tamizhakam as revealed through Pattanam Archaeological Evidence/P. J. Cherian. 6. Funerary Practices through the Ages in Tamil Nadu: A Study of Texts, Traditions and Burials/S.B. Darsana. 7. Apropos of Ayodhya/Hemant Dave. 8. Conceptualising ‘Rural’: Linkages, Settlement Hierarchy and Urbanization in the Early Medieval Shorapur-Doab/Suchi Dayal. 9. Urbanization in Coastal West Bengal/Kaushik Gangopadhyay. 10. The Curation of a National Archaeological Heritage: With Notes from the National Museum, New Delhi/Sudeshna Guha. 11. Looking beyond the Stone Structures of the Iron Age–Early Historic Burials/Smirti Haricharan. 12. Rethinking Northeast Indian Prehistory: Reappraisal to an Old Problem/Tiatoshi Jamir, Marco Mitri and Tilok Thakuria. 13. Archaeological Perceptions and Practices: Viewing a Harappan Object Over Time/Jaya Menon. 14. Problems and Prospects of Management of Prehistoric Sites in India with a Focus on Odisha/Debasis Kumar Mondal and Ranjana Ray. 15. Taking the Middle Path: Understanding the ‘Early’ Middle Palaeolithic of South Asia and Its Relationship with the Preceding Late Acheulean/Yezad Pardiwalla and Parth R. Chauhan. 16. ‘Etched’, ‘Bleached’ or ‘Decorated’ Carnelian Beads? A Reassessment of the Terminology of a Special Category of Agate-Carnelian Beads from the Harappan Civilization/V.N. Prabhakar. 17. Rock Paintings at Wyndham Falls, Mirzapur Vindhyas, Uttar Pradesh/Ajay Pratap, Anand P. Pathak, Rajeev Pratap, Nawal Kumar and Ruman Banerjee. 18. Molars of Tropical Rainforests: Lingual-Labial Axis of Cercopithecidae Molars as an Index of Ecologies, Dietary Patterns, and Species Overlap during Late Pleistocene to Early Holocene in Sri Lanka/Kalangi Rodrigo and Wijerathne Bohingamuwa. 19. Issues in the Meaning and Identification of Archaeological Cultures/V. Selvakumar. 20. Early Historic Terracotta of West Bengal: An Overview/Gautam Sengupta. 21. Shifting Time Frames: From Deep History to Archaeology of the Contemporary Past/Supriya Varma. 22. Archaeological Investigations in the Lower Tungabhadra Region of Andhra Pradesh/P.C. Venkatasubbaiah.

History and archaeology have become part of dynamic, active public discourse in more recent times, with the developments of heritagization, museumization, IT revolution and social media interventions. These subjects emerged as professional disciplines in South Asia with the combination of theoretical advancements and debates, social and community engagements and field-based investigations by innumerable researchers, fieldworkers, antiquarians and public historians/archaeologists in the twentieth century. Ideas from these disciplines have shaped the making of modern and contemporary India in the colonial and post-colonial contexts. Twenty-one research articles in this book, presented to one of the foremost archaeologists of our times, Professor K. Paddayya, who has significantly contributed to the advancement of archaeological theory and research, examine South Asian history from a cross-disciplinary and pluralistic perspective. The articles deliberate on the material culture and technological formations and the dynamics of prehistoric hunter-gatherers to the food-producing Neolithic economies.  They dwell on the material culture of the Harappan civilisation to the concepts of “rural” and “urban” in medieval historical contexts. They also concentrate on a nuanced discussion on the megalithic settlements and funerary practices, and the second urbanisation, cities, ports, and long-distance trade. The papers explore diverse themes from challenging the opinion that Ayodhya was not a real city to understanding the political nuances of how heritage – tangible and intangible – is constructed. This book takes on many important issues, including curation of heritage, archaeological theory and praxis, meanings and contexts of rock art and terracotta sculptures, and morphological study of Cercopithecidae remains from Late Pleistocene-Early Holocene Sri Lanka. These articles, based on new data, fresh interpretations, and engaging discussion, make the book an important contribution to the South Asian past and a fitting tribute to the academic contributions of Professor K. Paddayya.