A Companion to South Asia in the Past

A Companion to South Asia in the Past provides the definitive overview of research and knowledge about South Asia’s past, from the Pleistocene to the historic era in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal, provided by a truly global team of experts.

• The most comprehensive and detailed scholarly treatment of South Asian archaeology and biological anthropology, providing ground-breaking new ideas and future challenges
• Provides an in-depth and broad view of the current state of knowledge about South Asia’s past, from the Pleistocene to the historic era in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal
• A comprehensive treatment of research in a crucial region for human evolution and biocultural adaptation
• A global team of scholars together present a varied set of perspectives on South Asian pre- and proto-history

Notes on Contributors x

Acknowledgments xvii

Formal Dedication xviii
V.N. Misra

Foreword xx
Angela R. Lieverse

Maps xxvi

1 Introduction 1
Gwen Robbins Schug and Subhash R. Walimbe

Part I Paleoanthropology in South Asia 11

2 Mammalian Paleodiversity and Ecology of Siwalik Primates in India and Nepal 13
Rajan Gaur

3 A Decade of Paleoanthropology in the Indian Subcontinent (2005–2015) 32
Parth R. Chauhan

4 Archaic Genomes and the Peopling of South Asia 51
Mark Stoneking

5 Out of Africa and into South Asia: The Evidence from Paleolithic Archaeology 60
Ravi Korisettar

6 Hominin Fossil Remains from the Narmada Valley 72
A.R. Sankhyan

7 Mesolithic Foragers of the Ganges Plain and Adjoining Hilly Regions of the Vindhyas 86
J.N. Pal

8 Mesolithic Foragers of the Ganges Plain: Pathology, Stature, and Subsistence 101
John R. Lukacs

Part II Middle Holocene Farmers and Urban Dwellers 125

9 Current Perspectives on the Harappan Civilization 127
Vasant Shinde

10 Excavations at Harappa, 1986–2010: New Insights on the Indus Civilization and Harappan Burial Traditions 145
J.M. Kenoyer and R.H. Meadow

11 Bioarchaeology of the Indus Valley Civilization: Biological Affinities, Paleopathology, and Chemical Analyses 169
Nancy C. Lovell

12 More than Origins: Refining Migration in the Indus Civilization 187
Benjamin Valentine

13 Aryans and the Indus Civilization: Archaeological, Skeletal, and Molecular Evidence 205
Michel Danino

14 The Ahar Culture and Others: Social Spectrums of the Mewar Plain 225
Teresa P. Raczek

15 The Archaeology of the Late Holocene on the Deccan Plateau (The Deccan Chalcolithic) 240
Prabodh Shirvalkar and Esha Prasad

16 The Center Cannot Hold: A Bioarchaeological Perspective on Environmental Crisis in the Second Millennium bce, South Asia 255
Gwen Robbins Schug and Kelly Elaine Blevins

17 The “Gandhara Grave Culture”: New Perspectives on Protohistoric Cemeteries in Northern and Northwestern Pakistan 274
Muhammad Zahir

Part III Historic Archaeology: Monuments and Meaning 295

18 Early Iron Age Megalith Builders of Vidarbha: A Historical View 297
P.S. Joshi

19 Situating Iron Age Monuments in South India: A Textual and Ethnographic Approach 310
K. Rajan

20 A Review of Early Historic Urbanization in India 319
Reshma Sawant and Gurudas Shete

21 Historical and Medieval Period Archaeology 332
Monica L. Smith

22 The Transition to Agricultural Production in India: South Asian Entanglements of Domestication 344
Charlene A. Murphy and Dorian Q. Fuller

23 From Millet to Rice (and Back Again?): Cuisine, Cultivation, and Health in Southern India 358
Kathleen D. Morrison

24 Death and Burial among Two Ancient High]Altitude Communities of Nepal 374
Mark Aldenderfer and Jacqueline T. Eng

Part IV South Asia in Retrospect 399

25 Prehistoric Archaeology in Bangladesh: An Overview 401
Shahnaj Husne Jahan

26 Archaeology of Nepal 412
Prakash Darnal

27 The Peopling of Sri Lanka from Prehistoric to Historic Times: Biological and Archaeological Evidence 426
Samanti Kulatilake

28 Theoretical Archaeology in India: An Anthropological Perspective 437
K. Paddayya

29 Moving Forward, Looking Back: The Collective Memory of Indian Anthropology 450
Abhik Ghosh

30 Anthropology and Museums in India 465
Kishor K. Basa

31 Human Skeletal Studies: Changing Trends in Theoretical and Methodological Perspectives 482
Subhash R. Walimbe

32 Where Are They Now? The Human Skeletal Remains from India 496
V. Mushrif-Tripathy, K.S. Chakraborty, and S. Lahiri

Index 534

Gwen Robbins Schug is an Associate Professor of biological anthropology at Appalachian State University (Boone, NC). She is the author of Bioarchaeology and Climate Change: A View from South Asian Prehistory (2011). Her research has been widely published in academic journals and covered in Science Magazine, National Geographic, Science Daily, The New Yorker Magazine, and The New York Times.

Subhash Walimbe was Professor of biological anthropology at Deccan College Post-Graduate Research Institute and the Head of Department at Pune University before retiring in 2010. He is the author of nine books and more than 80 research articles on South Asian prehistory. His research has been funded by National Geographic, Smithsonian Institution, and the Ford Foundation, among others. He serves on the advisory committee to several Indian Universities and the Government of India research establishments.

A Companion to South Asia in the Past provides a thorough description of research on South Asia’s past, from the Pleistocene to the historic era in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka Bangladesh and Nepal. The chapters describe the peopling of South Asia, archaeological and bioarchaeological perspectives on human biocultural diversity in the subcontinent, and points of entry for understanding the meaning of complex phenomena observable in the South Asian context, from urbanism to monument-construction, economic exchange relationships to commodity cult. The authors cover the history of research, major theoretical concerns, current insights, and future challenges for the next generation of scholars working in this region.

Contributions are provided by a truly global range of experts—more than 40 scholars from Bangladesh, Canada, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, UK, and USA—from a variety of sub-disciplinary backgrounds, including palaeoanthropology, archaeology, archaeogenetics, bioarchaeology, isotopic analysis, and history. The diversity of scholarly training represented in this volume provides fresh and sometimes critical perspectives on archaeology and anthropology in South Asia. The result is a volume that provides a unique and definitive resource for anthropologists, South Asianists, and students of these disciplines.