Reconceptualizing the Archaeology of Southern India: Beyond Periodization and Toward a Politics of Practice

This book presents a paradigm shift in the long-term study of South India’s deep history.It refuses the disciplinary constraints of history and prehistory and interrogates the archaeological and textual records of the Deccan to disrupt its conventional archaeological periodizations, which have tended to reify and dehistoricize social and cultural differences. This book draws on over 20 years of original archaeological research from the southern Deccan region of India to critically reappraise the historiography that has framed its deep history.It fundamentally questions conventional archaeological paradigms, rooted in early colonial scholarship, which have structured interpretations of deep time with curiously ahistorical narratives of the past.This volume offers a more nuanced assessment of historical changes across a diversity of cultural, social, and political practices through the novel application of theoretical framings to archaeological and historical data, including political ec