Ebook: The Archaeology of Early Medieval and Medieval South Asia: Contesting Narratives from the Eastern Ganga-Brahmaputra Basin

This book looks at the ways in which archaeological methods have been
used in debates concerning the early medieval and medieval periods in
South Asia. Despite the incorporation and use of archaeological data to
corroborate historical narratives, the theories and methods of archaeology
are largely ignored in and excluded from the dominating, institutionalized,
and hegemonic disciplinary discourses. The volume offers contesting
insights, polemical narratives, and new data from archaeological contexts
to initiate a debate on many foundational premises of archaeological and
historical narratives. It focuses on the much-neglected region of the Eastern
Ganga-Brahmaputra Basin as a spatial frame to do this and studies themes
such as spatial and temporal scales of concepts and methods, multi-scaler
factors and processes of continuity and changes, the settlement archaeology
of the alluvial landscape, changing patterns of agrarian transformation, and
material cultures, including coins, inscriptions, pottery, and sculptures, in
their contexts in sub-regional, regional, and supra-regional intersections.
Dedicated to historian Brajadulal Chattopadhyaya, this volume presents
a crucial and unprecedented intervention in the study of the early medieval
and the medieval periods. It will be useful for scholars and researchers of
archaeology, ancient history, medieval history, water history, earth sciences,
palaeoecology, historical ecology, epigraphy, art history, material culture
studies, Indian history, and South Asian studies in general