Connections and Complexity—New Approaches to the Archaeology of South Asia

This compilation of original research articles highlight the important cross-regional, cross-chronological, and comparative approaches to political and economic landscapes in ancient South Asia and its neighbors. Focusing on the Indus Valley period and Iron Age India, this volume incorporates new research in South Asia within the broader universe of archaeological scholarship. Contributions focus on four major themes: reinterpreting material culture; identifying domains and regional boundaries; articulating complexity; and modeling interregional interaction. These studies develop theoretical models that may be applicable researchers studying cultural complexity elsewhere in the world.

Shinu Anna Abraham is Associate Professor of Anthropology at St. Lawrence University in Canton, NY. She received her PhD in 2003 from the University of Pennsylvania under the guidance of Gregory L. Possehl. Her specializations include early Indian Ocean exchange, Early Historic Tamil South India, craft production, and ancient glass bead technologies. She is co-editor, with Roberta Tomber and Lucy Blue, of Migration, Trade and Peoples Part I: Issues in Indian Ocean Trade and Commerce (2010).

Praveena Gullapalli is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Rhode Island College in Providence, RI. She received her PhD in 2005 from the University of Pennsylvania, advised by Gregory L. Possehl. She is broadly interested in the relationships between technologies and their social and cultural contexts and more specifically in understanding the organization of metal production in Early Historic South Asia. She also investigates the ways in which archaeological knowledge is displayed in museums and how museum displays can and do inform public perceptions of the past and present.

Teresa P. Raczek is an anthropological archaeologist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and Anthropology at Kennesaw State University. She obtained her PhD in Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania in 2007 and her MA in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago. She has conducted field work in the southwest of the US, France, and India. Her specializations include early complex societies, mobility, technology, and the life of archaeology in the present. She is currently a Co-Director of the Chatrikhera Research Project and previously co-edited with Vasant Shinde The Gilund Project: Excavations in Regional Context (2010) as well as two other volumes.

Uzma Z. Rizvi is Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Urban Studies at Pratt Institute where she teaches archaeology, ancient urbanism, complex societies, and heritage politics. Her current research interests include ancient South Asia, political economy, social aspects of metallurgy, and the postcolonial critique. Since receiving her doctorate from the Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania in 2007, Rizvi has been Faculty Fellow and Chair for the Initiative on Art, Community Development and Social Change at the Pratt Center (2007-2008) and a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities at Stanford University (2008-2009). She has edited Archaeology and the Postcolonial Critique (with M. Liebmann; Altamira Press, 2008), the World Archaeological Congress Research Handbook on Postcolonial Archaeology (with J. Lydon; Left Coast Press, 2011) and she is the section editor (with L. Weiss and W. Londono) for Political and Social Archaeology in The Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology (2012).