Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Complex Societies on the Periphery: Regional Networks in South India, 1st - 14th C AD

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Under the direction of Dr. Carla Sinopoli, doctoral dissertation student Uthara Suvrathan will study the organization of complexity in a sub-region in peninsular India and its changing relationships through time with subcontinent wide processes, especially imperial expansion, during the 1st through 14th centuries AD. Suvrathan's project will examine data collected through a systematic archaeological survey in the hinterland of Banavasi, a regional capital and Gudnapur, an adjacent, contemporaneous lower order center. Banavasi rose to prominence as the capital of the regional kingdom of the Kadamba dynasty (4th- 6th centuries AD) and continued to maintain its importance as an administrative center until the 14th/15th centuries. The polity centered on Banavasi however, did not retain its independence throughout this sequence although regional elite groups maintained a presence in the region. From the 7th to the 10th centuries the region came under the control of a series of imperial powers. This project will record the type and distribution of archaeological sites in order to document the material patterning that will help to identify local and imperial socioeconomic groups, systems, and activities. This archaeological data will be integrated with historical and epigraphic sources to develop a complete picture of regional organization at Banavasi. Through the analysis of this data (artifacts, architecture, epigraphic records) it will be possible to evaluate two models of regional socio-political organization over time, one of which postulates a high degree of control by larger imperial systems and the other which argues for limited external contact and the relative independence of the region. These models will be operationalized using multiple lines of archaeological evidence: material evidence for administrative/ political authority and militarism (including monumental and defense architecture and inscriptions); settlement organization and the spatial distribution of monuments on the landscape; ideology and religion and forms of production and exchange (as reflected in ceramic and iron technologies and trade in prestige items). Imperial control at the site and its hinterland will be visible archaeologically in a variety of ways, including evidence for administrative and military control; economic extraction; centralized ritual activity; the establishment of extra-regional networks and the spread of architectural and ceramic styles and religious traditions from external core areas. Evidence for local autonomy may include a tendency towards regional styles in architecture, ritual activities and material culture; evidence for economic extraction by regional elites.This project will make a significant contribution to the anthropological study of regional socio-cultural entities in South Asia. The results will be published both in a report to be submitted to the Karnataka Department of Archaeology and Museums and in peer reviewed journals in India and the US. The collections made during the course of research will be catalogued/ organized and transferred to the government of India, making them available to future generations of scholars for comparative study. This project also encourages academic interaction with Indian students. The survey is structured such that it will provide an opportunity for interested students from Indian colleges to participate in anthropological archaeological research and learn new techniques and methods. Finally, this project will document the archaeological history in a region whose heritage is rapidly being destroyed due to expanding agricultural activities, new construction work and intensive logging activities in the hills surrounding the site.