Spaces and Places: Examining historic maps from South Asia

Summary

This poster presents a preliminary attempt to systematically interpret and analyze historical cartographic data from South Asia. Information from historic maps of South Asia is combined with archaeological settlement data to reconstruct the nature and distribution of regional administrative and religious centers in south central India. Preliminary research in the area suggests that regional administrative centers often occupied a place in local pilgrimage and trade networks. However, this position was not static and seems to have been closely linked to multiple factors such as the political strategies of elites, imperial expansion, regional trade systems, and the establishment of religious institutions. By examining a wide corpus of medieval and colonial maps of South Asia, dating from the 16th century to the early 19th century, and comparing this data to published archaeological settlement data, it is possible to trace some of the spatial and temporal configurations of the loci of political and religious authority. In addition, the poster comments on western and indigenous ideas of the organization (and control) of space.

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage