Description
The essays in this volume are an attempt to tease out from the scant archaeological (and to some extent historical) sources available, some information on certain aspects of rural societies in the past: mobility, subsistence from animal herding, symbiosis between crop production and animal rearing, situating hunters and gatherers, and the importance of forest as integral to rural life rather than the dichotomous ‘other’ of the field or village. There is also an attempt to bring out the ways in which tribal society, continuously misrepresented in academia today, laid the foundations of many aspects of Indian civilization in the remote past.
CONTENTS
Introduction
- Hunter-Gatherer and Early Agriculturist: Archaeological Evidence for Contact
- Our Tribal Past
- A Chalcolithic Village in a Famine Belt
- Pastoralism as an Issue in Historical Research
Cover picture: Bhoor Chan jain
Shereen Ratnagar
Shereen Ratnagar gave up her Professorship in Archaeology at the JNU when it ceased to be fun and has since been researching and teaching in various places. Her interests include the bronze age, trade, urbanism, pastoralism, and, recently, the social dimensions of early technology.She writes extensively and authoritatively on archaeological matters.
Her books are widely read by students, teachers and scholars, of course, but also by the general reader. Her style of writing is friendly and accessible, which makes reading her a pleasure.
Apart from numerous research papers in specialised journals of history and archaeology, she is author of Understanding Harappa; End of the Great Harappan Tradition; Mobile and Marginalised Peoples: Perspectives from the Past; Encounters: The Westerly Trade of the Harappa Civilization; Ayodhya: Archaeology After Excavation; Makers and Shapers: Early Indian Technology in the Home, Village and Urban Workshop; Being Tribal.
She lives in Mumbai.
