Archaeological survey Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

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.