Socializing Historical Environments

Abstract

This presentation provides a long-term overview of ancient human land use in a region of eastern Karnataka, reviewing evidence from the Neolithic Period (ca. 3000-1200BC) to the Medieval Period and the establishment of the Vijayanagara Empire (ca. AD 1336). Relying on excavation data, survey observations, remote sensing analyses, and palynological assessments, the talk considers how a variety of past cultural activities – ranging from agro-pastoral subsistence production to the construction of reservoirs and elaborate megalithic mortuary complexes – were instrumental in configuring both material environments and social relationships in the past. For example, ongoing research on the Iron Age (ca. 1200-400 BC) suggests that landscape modifications associated with stock herding and agricultural production were linked with strategies of reproducing certain forms of social differences, and perhaps inequalities. The broader point of the presentation is that many of the landscape features within the study region – although commonly considered part of an a priori natural environment – are historical products of a confluence of past cultural practices, socio-political strategies, and material processes.

Speaker

Andrew BAUER, PhD candidate at the Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago, currently affilated to the Palaeoenvironment project at the Department of Ecology, French Institute of Pondicherry

Organisers

Department of Ecology, French Institute of Pondicherry

Venue

Jawaharlal Nehru Conference Hall, French Institute of Pondicherry, 11, Saint Louis Street, Pondicherry - 605001

Time

16h30