Linguistics, Archaeology and Human Past in South Asia

Contents: Preface. Introduction. I. The Indus Civilization: 1. The origin, context and function of the Indus Script: recent insights from Harappa/J.M. Kenoyer. 2. Faunal studies in India: methodological issues and prospects/P.P. Joglekar. 3. Early farmers: issues of spread and migration with respect to the Indian subcontinent/P. Bellwood. 4. A new Indus seal excavated at Gonur (Turkmenistan) in November 2004/Asko Parpola. II. Agricultural vocabulary: 5. South Asian agricultural terms in Old Indo-Aryan/M. Witzel. 6. Proto-Dravidian agriculture/F.C Southworth. 7. How many proto-Munda words in Sanskrit?: With special reference to agricultural vocabulary/Toshiki Osada. 8. 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)/D.Q. Fuller. III. Comparative mythology: 9. Indo-European epics and comparative methods: Pentadics structures in Homer and the Mahabharata/N. Allen. 10. Asvin and Nasatya-in the Rgveda and their prehistoric background/T. Goto. 11. Creation myths/M. Witzel. List of contributors.

"The book contains a selection of papers presented at the Seventh Harvard Roundtable on Ethnogenesis of South and Central Asia co-organised by the Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies, Harvard University and Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (RIHN), Kyoto, Japan." (jacket)