Presented here are the data collected during regional surveys of Vidarbha, India, which were collected to reconstruct the societal and cultural changes that took place in this region during the mid-first millennium CE. Following an overview of the data and their research context, we describe the methods that were used to collect, process and analyse them. This is accompanied by a critical assessment of the factors that constrained the survey and our results. The dataset is then described in detail, with a thorough account of each data group and how they are arranged, presented and archived. Finally, we discuss how these data can be reused in the continued archaeological study of this region, and comparative studies of site distributions.
This report presents the results of a short programme of fieldwork targeted towards the investigation of the archaeological and geographical setting of the Chamak copperplate charter. This inscription, unearthed in the modern village of Chamak in 1868, records the grant of land to a group of Brahmins living in the village of 'Charmaka'. These have long been assumed to be the same place, but the archaeological contexts of the find spot of the charter had never been explored. Preliminary surveys in and around Chamak have revealed a considerable amount of archaeological material, which is presented here.
In India, cup marks/cupules are the earliest known form of rock art reported from various Prehistoric rock art sites. However, their occurrences have been also noticed on the megalithic tombs at various sites. Occurrence of these cup marks on the megalithic structures in Nagpur was brought to lime light as early as in 1879 by Rivet Carnac. Since then no significant systematic study was conducted on cup mark stones and their relation to the structures in which they are found. Although various scholars studying Indian rock art have systematically and scientifically studied the cupules manifested on the walls, ceilings and floors of rock shelters and caverns, as well as those exemplified on the boulders and on bed rock, they are yet to provide a convincing cultural or artistic meaning of these petroglyphs. I have studied the occurrence of cup marks pecked on the boulders of stones circles of the Megalithic burial site of Junapani in district Nagpur, India, suggests, that boulders bearing cup marks follow some directionality towards some astronomically important directions. Certain identifiable geometrical and linear cup mark patterns common in some of the burials were also discerned in the study.
During the mid-first millennium AD, new kingdoms and states emerged across South Asia. At this time, land grants made to Hindu temples are thought to have led to wide-ranging societal transformations. To date, however, neither the land-grant charters nor the changes they are said to have driven have been studied archaeologically. Here, the authors present the results of the first archaeological investigation of the charters and their landscape context. Bringing together the textual record with a survey of 268 religious and residential sites, the results establish historical baselines against which the longue durée developments of South Asian social, political and economic formation can be profitably re-posed.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.