Microregions and Materiality: Artifact Analysis at Panchmata, India

Summary

Regional, landscape, and spatial analyses in South Asia are often conducted at large scales in order to encompass all potential sites that share a common material culture, polity, or economic system. As these analyses often overlap with culture history designations and simultaneously span multiple geographic and environmental conditions, they can obscure material diversity and human-environment relations. This paper carefully considers scale of analysis and argues that microregions, small areas that comprise just a few sites in the same environmental context, are the perfect size for studying material culture in South Asia. Sites within a microregion lie within walking distance in the same ecological niche, and often draw from the same resources. Microregional analysis acknowledges that much social activity happens "off-site," in the fields, rivers, and woods that lie between designated archaeological sites. That is, inhabitants of microregions created communities that crossed site boundaries, participated in overlapping economic networks, and shared common histories. Utilizing a microregional framework also allows researchers to consider social formations apart from national narratives. This paper provides a microregional analysis of the site of Panchmata, in the Mewar Plain of northwest India with the goal of providing an alternative narrative about Indian pasts.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Archaeology of India

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 14874