Reevaluating Vijayanagara Imperial Collapse

Summary

This paper reexamines notions of imperial collapse by looking at recent archaeological work at the eponymous capital of the Vijayanagara Empire and at settlements of one of its subordinate regional polities. The Vijayanagara Empire is well-known archaeologically through work at its primary capital at modern day Hampi, Karnataka, India, which is today recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The former primary capital city was intensively occupied until just after the empire suffered a serious military defeat in 1565 CE, following which the imperial court left to reestablish itself at two subsequent capitals quite distant from the original. This process has often been termed as the "collapse and abandonment" of Vijayanagara, though in reality, both the central government and its regional subsidiaries persisted and even flourished. The Keladi-Ikkeri Nayakas were established as regional leaders under the Vijayanagara Empire and later ruled as an independent state based in modern Shimoga District, Karnataka. The historical record and archaeological evidence from Nayaka sites is reviewed against the record of the imperial capital to argue that flexibility in imperial political strategies facilitated socio-political continuity, rather than collapse, on the periphery.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• People without Collapse: Peripheries as Active Participants in Cultural Transformations

Keywords

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