Excavations and Geophysical Survey at the Early Historic Town of Talapada, India

在美国国家科学基金会的支持下，莫妮卡·L.史密斯和来自美国和印度的同事团队将在印度东部的塔拉帕达考古遗址进行三个实地研究季节，以调查城镇在城市化环境中的作用。 塔拉帕达在早期历史时期（公元前世纪至公元世纪）被占领，这是一个以印度次大陆的重大变化为标志的时代，包括佛教的发展，首次广泛使用文字，以及城市的出现。 塔拉帕达是最近发现的一个遗址，周围环绕着一个巨大的城墙，这是史密斯和同事们以前工作过的锡苏帕尔加尔市中心的防御墙的四分之一大小的精确复制品。 在塔拉帕达遗址的调查提供了一个机会，以评估城镇如何与该地区的主导中心互动。 塔拉帕达的居民显然参与了一些政治联系，如城墙建设所示。 然而，该遗址的人工制品类型的多样性表明，该镇不仅仅是一个小规模的锡苏帕尔加尔，居民可能已经产生并维持了自己独特的经济，社会和仪式传统。 该研究将特别关注塔拉帕达与其较大的邻国之前和之后的“卡林加战争”的第三个世纪，该地区被一个较大的邻国短暂征服。 该项目将是印度第一个利用同样的调查方法，包括地球物理调查和挖掘，以检查早期历史时期不同规模的遗址。挖掘工作将提供有关文物和建筑的数据，并产生一系列全面的放射性碳年代测定，以确定该遗址随时间的发展阶段。 在挖掘的同时，该团队还将利用非破坏性地球物理调查来追踪Talapada社区大小区域的地下建筑特征，以检查社会和空间配置，这些配置也将与Sisupalgarh进行比较。该项目的智力价值体现在对城镇作为城市化景观中中等规模人口中心的调查中。 通过调查和挖掘，该项目将从普通人的角度分析南亚早期历史时代的社会，经济和政治发展。 这些数据的结构将与其他考古学上已知的地区进行比较，在这些地区，长寿城镇的居民创造了灵活的互动网络，使他们即使在地区冲突期间也能蓬勃发展。 该研究项目的更广泛影响包括印度和美国研究人员和学生之间的重大国际合作;为印度和美国学生的论文和学位论文提供数据;对学生进行考古现场技术和分析的培训;以及为大学课程和公开演讲提供资源。

With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Monica L. Smith and a team of colleagues from the United States and India will conduct three field seasons of research at the archaeological site of Talapada in eastern India to investigate the role of towns in urbanizing environments. Talapada was occupied in the Early Historic period (4th century BC to 3rd century AD), an era marked by momentous change in the Indian subcontinent that included the development of Buddhism, the first extensive use of writing, and the emergence of cities. Talapada is a recently discovered site surrounded by a massive encircling rampart that is an exact replica, at one-quarter size, of the fortification wall at the nearby urban center of Sisupalgarh where Smith and colleagues have previously worked. Investigations at the site of Talapada present an opportunity to evaluate how towns interacted with the region's dominant center. Talapada's inhabitants clearly were engaged in some political linkages as exhibited in rampart construction. However, the variability of artifact types at the site suggests that the town was not simply a small-size version of Sisupalgarh and that the inhabitants may have generated and sustained their own distinctive economic, social, and ritual traditions. The research will particularly focus on Talapada's relationship with its larger neighbor before and after the "Kalinga War" of the third century BC in which the region was briefly conquered by a larger neighboring state. The project will be the first in India to utilize the same methods of investigation, including geophysical survey and excavations, to examine sites of different sizes in the Early Historic period. The excavations will provide data on artifacts and architecture, as well as generating a comprehensive series of radiocarbon dates to identify the stages of the site's development over time. In conjunction with the excavations, the team also will utilize non-destructive geophysical survey to trace subsurface architectural features in neighborhood-sized areas at Talapada to examine social and spatial configurations that also will be compared with Sisupalgarh. The intellectual merit of the project is encompassed in its investigation of towns as intermediate-sized population centers in an urbanizing landscape. Through survey and excavation, the project will enable the analysis of the social, economic, and political developments of South Asia's Early Historic era from the perspective of ordinary people. The data will be structured for comparison with other archaeologically known regions in which the inhabitants of long-lived towns and cities created flexible networks of interaction that enabled them to thrive even during periods of regional conflict. The broader impacts of the research project include significant international collaboration between Indian and US researchers and students; provision of data for theses and dissertations for both Indian and US students; training of students in archaeological field techniques and analysis; and provision of resources for university classes and public presentations.