Growing Infrastructure, Cultivating Differences: The Temporalities of Agricultural Assemblages and the Social History of the Raichur Doab, Southern India

Summary

This paper examines the history of medieval (circa 500-1600 CE) agricultural infrastructure—assemblages of soils, irrigation wells, and processing facilities—in the semi-arid conditions of the Raichur Doab, Southern India. Despite some investiture from ruling elites and temples, the material evidence for agro-infrastructural development suggests that it was not merely a project of state or institutional design. Rather, its development might more productively be characterized as a process of "growth" in which socio-material systems for facilitating the movement and production of matter and things emerged in relation to a range of differentiated actors and unruly cultivation conditions. The durable associations of soils, cultigens, and water appear to belie the common characterization of the Raichur Doab as a space of inherent "fertility" and calls into question the assumption that the region’s unique multiculturalism during the medieval period was an outcome of competition for its economic resources, as is commonly emphasized.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 21437