St Edmund's College

In this paper we present a multi-proxy study of tropical limestone forest and its utilization by human groups during the significant climatic and environmental upheavals of MIS-2 (29e11.7 kBP). Our data are drawn from new field research within the Tr ang An World Heritage property on the edge of the Red River Delta, northern Vietnam. Key findings from this study include 1) that limestone forest formations were resilient to the large-scale landscape transformation of the Sunda continent at the end of the last glaciation; 2) that prehistoric human groups were probably present in this habitat throughout MIS-2; and 3) that the forested, insular, karst of Tr ang An provided foragers with a stable resource-base in a wider changing landscape during the late Pleistocene and into the Holocene. These results have implications for our understanding of the prehistoric utilization of karst environments, and resonance for their conservation in the face of climate and environmental change today.

The fourth to the seventh centuries C.E., commonly referred to as the " Gupta Era " , are widely regarded as a formative period in South Asian history. Textual historical approaches to the study of this period have focussed on the examination of inscriptions, which constitute the largest single source of evidence. One group of inscriptions, the copperplate charters, have proved particularly important. They not only record the practice of royal land grants to Brahmins and temple institutions, but also embody wider processes of political legitimation, religious transformation and socioeconomic change. Thus far, however, studies have focussed on the texts of these inscriptions, which remain divorced from the contexts that produced them and in which they were used. Arguing for an archaeological approach to the study of these charters, this paper demonstrates the value of investigating their geographical and archaeological contexts—first, by mapping the find spots of these charters across the subcontinent; and second, by exploring the archaeological settings of these find spots in one particular region: Vidarbha. The results of this work have clear implications for the future study of these and other inscriptions, and suggest new directions for archaeological approaches to the study of historical periods.

In this paper we present a multi-proxy study of tropical limestone forest and its utilization by human groups during the significant climatic and environmental upheavals of MIS-2 (29e11.7 kBP). Our data are drawn from new field research within the Tr ang An World Heritage property on the edge of the Red River Delta, northern Vietnam. Key findings from this study include 1) that limestone forest formations were resilient to the large-scale landscape transformation of the Sunda continent at the end of the last glaciation; 2) that prehistoric human groups were probably present in this habitat throughout MIS-2; and 3) that the forested, insular, karst of Tr ang An provided foragers with a stable resource-base in a wider changing landscape during the late Pleistocene and into the Holocene. These results have implications for our understanding of the prehistoric utilization of karst environments, and resonance for their conservation in the face of climate and environmental change today.

This article presents the results of the analysis of the pottery from the recently excavated site at Mahurjhari in central India. In doing so, it also proposes a new way of looking at archaeological ceramics in South Asia. Here, archaeological ceramics are traditionally defined on the basis of their visual appearance (their colour and texture), which results in a great deal of ambiguity, limits intra-and interregional comparison, and impedes a more material culture-based approach to their study. Indeed, there is no established pottery typology for the region in which this site is located, and despite the fact that ceramics invariably account for the majority of excavated assemblages they frequently remain unreported. Addressing this, we suggest that recording and analysing archaeological ceramics on the basis of how they were made (essentially, implementing a chaîne opératoire approach) might be a useful way to proceed. Given that such approaches are new in this area, we explain what this entails, and then present the results of the analysis of this pottery assemblage using these methods-defining classes of pottery an on the basis of traces left by the ways they were made. With a typology thus defined on the basis on the practice of pottery manufacture, we then seriate the assemblage with reference to recent AMS dates obtained from the site and suggest a chronological sequence for the pots from this site. These results are then framed within a wider discussion of the potential value of the application of new ways of looking at archaeological ceramics in South Asia.

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This article presents the AMS radiocarbon dating results of ten samples from the excavation of the site at Mahurjhari, District Nagpur, Maharashtra. The site is known for its proto-historic and early historic remains, and archaeological investigations have focused on the earlier megalithic, or early Iron Age, phases of activity at the site. Recently, it has been possible to analyse dating samples collected from excavation trenches in the later early historic area of activity at the site. This article presents the results of these radiocarbon determinations. The results allow us to place the early historical phase of the occupation and associated activities that took place at the site into a more secure chronological context, and facilitate the further study of historical periods in the wider region.

The data presented here are the results of recent archaeological fieldwork carried out to investigate the societal and cultural developments that took place in South Asia during the mid-first millennium CE. These centuries are characterised as a Golden Age in India. During this time we see the appearance of many of the commonly perceived hallmarks of 'Indian' society, such as: the emergence of Hindu temple institutions [6, 58]; the spread and adoption of various new forms of government and administration across the subcontinent with Sanskrit as the courtly language [2, 14, 37]; and a flourishing of artistic and scientific endeavour evident in various media [15, 32, 51, 56]. These developments are usually associated with the growth of the Gupta Empire in North India during the fourth century CE [31, 57]. Our archaeological understanding of these developments is problematic for a number of reasons [17, 26]. The study of this and all subsequent phases of South Asia's past are dominated by text-based histories-a feature of scholarship that affects not only what is studied, but how those sources are studied. Research questions tend to be oriented towards historical concerns with the development of kingdoms and states [13, 25], the spread of religious institutions [3, 5] and socioeconomic systems [42, 48]. Within this general thrust of enquiry, archaeology tends to contribute only in terms of providing archaeological evidence for the corroboration or contradiction of those theories and ideas [17, 18]. Further complicating the situation is the fact that most archaeologists working in South Asia tend to focus on earlier periods , where there are fewer or no textual sources, and they are less constrained by historical paradigms [7]. As a result, most of the archaeological data that we have for the mid-first millennium come not from the investigation of that period, but are remains found by happenstance through the excavation of sites with earlier foundations. Within this research context, one of the richest strands of historical enquiry rests on the study of a series of inscriptions carved on copper plates that are found throughout South Asia from the fourth century CE onwards. These inscriptions record royal grants of land to (usually) Hindu temple institutions [12, 33]. They are the largest textual corpus for the period, and have been used as evidence for: the nature of the relationships between kings and other political , administrative and religious institutions; changing power relations; charting the spread of new administrative practices, land rights and agricultural production. However, until recently these inscriptions were not considered as material entities, and none had been located on the ground [19]. In most cases, their readings and interpretations continue to be made with reference to wider theoretical models rather than the material, textual or visual evidence from the areas in which they were made, used and found. Presented here are the data collected during regional surveys of Vidarbha, India, which were collected to reconstruct the societal and cultural changes that took place in this region during the mid-first millennium CE. Following an overview of the data and their research context, we describe the methods that were used to collect, process and analyse them. This is accompanied by a critical assessment of the factors that constrained the survey and our results. The dataset is then described in detail, with a thorough account of each data group and how they are arranged, presented and archived. Finally, we discuss how these data can be reused in the continued archaeological study of this region, and comparative studies of site distributions.

In this article we advocate a return to the consideration and examination of the basic building blocks of archaeological enquiry: the evidence. Reacting to a widely held perception that archaeology now understands various commonalities of human experience , we suggest that such concepts and the inevitable oscillation towards "big picture" approaches that stems from them are problematic. They engender a type of scholarship that does not always engage fully with the evidentiary bases of interpretation and that risks assuming a great deal about large parts of the world that have not been studied in as much detail as others. We explore this by looking at the South Asian context, where archaeologists are forced to contend with a number of constraints, chief among which is a relative absence of archaeological evidence. Focusing on one particular sub-region, we piece together exactly what evidence exists and consider what can (and cannot) be said from it. On one level this serves as a useful comparator for those working in other parts of the world who may not appreciate the evidentiary constraints that exist elsewhere. Yet beyond this and simple questions of analogy, we suggest that detailed consideration of an area such as the one presented here forces us to return to even more fundamental questions relating to when archaeological research becomes "interesting", "ground-breaking", and "new"; and who decides this.