Current scholarship on medieval South India has developed a comprehensive account of the ways in which political claims were constituted by dynasts and their subordinates in a range of contexts, from imperial courts to provinces. It has elaborated the modalities of political claim-making through instantiations of politico-cultural traditions or ‘cosmopolises’, and the integrative processes and social changes associated with them. However, this scholarship largely focused on imperial capitals and secondary urban settlements, which constituted nodes in the political networks of polities and loci of contestation and integration within them. Regions in which cosmopolitan traditions did not inform political practice remain opaque to this historiography.
This article investigates one such contest- the ‘contested’ Raichur Doab. It explores the politics of the production of a settlement- MARP-30 and the ways they were negotiated to constitute relations of inclusion and exclusion.MARP-30 is part of the multi-component site at Maski that during the period of MARP-30’s occupation does not evince evidence of cosmopolitan practices. Examining the constitution of socio-political relations in this context will expand our understanding of political practice in medieval South India to include practices inaccessible through texts and under-explored archaeologically, and yet typical of medieval South India given the political and social dynamism that characterize the medieval period.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
AcharyaPrasanna Kumar. 1981. Indian Architecture According to Manasara-Silpasastra. Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint Corporation.
2.
AliDaud. 2012. ‘The Historiography of the Medieval in South Asia’. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 22, no. 17–12.
3.
BauerAndrew M.2011. ‘Producing the Political Landscape: Monuments, Labor, Water and Place in Iron Age Central Karnataka’, in The Archaeology of Politics: The Materiality of Political Practice and Action in the Past, edited by JohansenPeter G. and BauerAndrew M.. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing: 83–114.
4.
BauerAndrew M.2015. Before Vijayanagara: Prehistoric Landscapes and Politics in the Tungabhadra Basin. Delhi: Manohar and American Institute of Indian Studies.
5.
BauerAndrew M.2018. ‘Remote Sensing Soils and Social Geographies of Difference: The Landscape Archaeology of Regur from Iron Age through Medieval Period Northern Karnataka, Southern India’. Journal of Field Archaeology, vol. 43, no. 131–43.
6.
BauerAndrew M.2019. ‘Urbanism and the Temporality of Materiality on the Medieval Deccan: Beyond the Cosmograms of Social and Political Space,’ in New Materialisms, Ancient Urbanisms, edited by AltSusan M. and PauketatTimothy R.. New York: Routledge: 184–217.
7.
BauerAndrew M.2021. ‘Ritualizing Land and Cultivating Distinctions: Medieval Period Donative Practices and a Political Ecology of the Raichur Doab’, in Power, Presence and Space, edited by AlberyHenry, HartmannJens-Uwe and RayHimanshu Prabha. Abingdon: Routledge: 233–57.
8.
BauerAndrew M. and JohansenPeter G.. 2015. ‘Prehistoric Mortuary Practices and the Constitution of Social Relationships: Implications of the First Radiocarbon Dates from Maski on the Occupational History of a South India’ Type Site’, Radiocarbon, vol. 57, no. 5795–806.
9.
BauerAndrew M. and JohansenPeter G.. 2019. ‘The Maski Archaeological Research Project (2010–18): Initial Results from a Multi-Period Interdisciplinary Project on the Raichur Doab, Karnataka, India’, Current Science, vol. 117, no. 146–56.
10.
BauerAndrew M. and JohansenPeter G.. 2020. ‘Making Megaliths and Constituting Collectives: Politics, Places and Historicity in Prehistoric South India’, in The Archaeology of Knowledge Traditions of the Indian Ocean World, edited by RayHimanshu Prabha. Abingdon: Routledge: 102–26.
11.
BlantonRichard E., FeinmanGary M., KowalewskiStephen A., and PeregrinePeter N.. 1996. ‘A Dual-Processual Theory for the Evolution of Mesoamerican Civilization’. Current Anthropology, vol. 37, no. 11–14.
12.
BourdieuPierre. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology, vol. 16. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
13.
BrubakerRobert. 2004. Cornerstones of Control: The Infrastructure of Imperial Security at Vijayanagara, South India. Unpublished PhD Thesis: Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago, Chicago.
14.
ChapmanRobert. 2003. Archaeologies of Complexity. London: Routledge.
15.
Chase-DunnChristopher and HallThomas D.. 1993. ‘Comparing World-Systems: Concepts and Working Hypotheses’. Social Forces, vol. 71, no. 4851–86.
16.
Chase-DunnChristopher and HallThomas D.. 2018. ‘Conceptualizing Core/Periphery Hierarchies for Comparative Study’, in Core/Periphery Relations in Precapitalist Worlds, edited by Chase-DunnChristopher and HallThomas D.. New York: Routledge: 5–44.
17.
ChattopadhyayaBrajadulal. 1994. The Making of Early Medieval India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
18.
ChattopadhyayaBrajadulal. 1995. ‘Political Processes and the Structure of Polity in Early Medieval India’, in The State in India 1000-1700, edited by KulkeHermann. Delhi: Oxford University Press: 195–232.
19.
CoxWhitney. 2016. Politics, Kingship, and Poetry in Medieval South India: Moonset on Sunrise Mountain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
20.
CoxWhitney M.2010. ‘Scribe and Script in the Calukya West Deccan’. The Indian Economic & Social History Review, vol. 47, no. 11–28.
21.
ComaroffJohn L., and ComaroffJean. 1991. Of Revelation and Revolution (Two volumes). University of Chicago Press.
22.
De CerteauMichel. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. RandallSteven. Berkeley: University of California Press.
23.
DeaganKathleen. 1998. ‘Transculturation and Spanish American Ethnogenesis: The Archaeological Legacy of the Quincentenary’, in Studies in Culture Contact: Interaction, Culture Change, and Archaeology, edited by CusickJames G.. Carbondale: Center for Archaeological Investigations, Southern Illinois University: 23–43.
24.
DietlerMichael. 1990. ‘Driven by Drink: The Role of Drinking in the Political Economy and the Case of Early Iron Age France’. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, vol. 9, no. 4352–406.
25.
EatonRichard M.2019. India in the Persianate Age: 1000-1765. London: Penguin UK.
26.
EatonRichard M. and WagonerPhillip B.. 2014. Power, Memory, Architecture: Contested Sites on India’s Deccan Plateau, 1300-1600. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
27.
FoucaultMichel. 2007. Security, territory and population: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977–78. Trans. G. Burchell. Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan:.
28.
FritzJohn M.1986. ‘Vijayanagara: Authority and Meaning of a South Indian Imperial Capital’. American Anthropologist, vol. 88, no. 144–55.
29.
FritzJohn M. and MichellGeorge. 1987. ‘Interpreting the Plan of a Medieval Hindu Capital, Vijayanagara’. World Archaeology, vol. 19, no. 1105–29.
30.
FritzJohn M., MichellGeorge and Nagaraja RaoM. S.. 1984. Where Kings and Gods Meet: The Royal Centre at Vijayanagara, India. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
31.
HarveyDavid. 1989. The Condition of Postmodernity. Oxford: Blackwell Oxford.
32.
HeitzmanJames. 1987. ‘Temple Urbanism in Medieval South India’. The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 46, no. 4791–826.
33.
HillierBill and HansonJulienne. 1989. The Social Logic of Space. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
34.
HodderIan. 1985. ‘Postprocessual Archaeology’, in Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory Vol. VIII, edited by SchifferM. B.. Orlando: Academic Press: 1–26.
35.
IndenRonald B.1990. Imagining India. Indiana University Press.
36.
IngoldTim. 2010. ‘The Temporality of the Landscape’, in Contemporary Archaeology in Theory: The New Pragmatism, edited by PreucelRobert W. and MrozowskiStephen A.. West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons: 59–77.
37.
JohansenPeter G.2008. A Political Economy of Space: Social Organization and the Production of an Iron Age Settlement Landscape in Northern Karnataka. Unpublished PhD Thesis: Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago, Chicago.
38.
JohansenPeter G.2011. ‘Practicing Social Difference, Producing Social Space: The Political Architectonics of Iron Age Settlement Places’, in The Archaeology of Politics: The Materiality of Political Practice and Action in the Past, edited by JohansenPeter G. and BauerAndrew M.. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing: 186–220.
39.
JohansenPeter G.2014. ‘Early Ironworking in Iron Age South India: New Evidence for the Social Organization of Production from Northern Karnataka’. Journal of Field Archaeology vol. 39, no. 3256–75.
40.
JohansenPeter G. and BauerAndrew M.. 2011. ‘Reconfiguring the “Political” in the Reconstruction of Past Political Production’, in The Archaeology of Politics: The Materiality of Political Practice and Action in the Past, edited by JohansenPeter G. and BauerAndrew M. New Castle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing: 1–29.
41.
JohansenPeter G. and BauerAndrew M.. 2015. ‘Beyond Culture History at Maski: Land Use, Settlement and Social Differences in Neolithic through Medieval South India’. Archaeological Research in Asia, vol. 1, no. 26–16.
42.
JohansenPeter G. and BauerAndrew M.. 2018. ‘On the Matter of Resources and Techno-Politics: The Case of Water and Iron in the South Indian Iron Age’. American Anthropologist, vol. 120, no. 3412–28.
43.
JohansenPeter G. and BauerAndrew M.. in press ‘Medieval “Mosangi”: Settlement, Land Use and the making of Political Landscapes in the Raichur Doab’, in Beyond Stones and More Stones, Vol. III, edited by KorisettarRavi. Bengalaru: Mythic Society.
44.
KalraKanika. 2016. Water Management and Settlement Patterns in South India from c. Eleventh Century to Sixteenth Century AD. Unpublished PhD Thesis: University of California, Los Angeles.
45.
KarashimaNoboru. 2014. A Concise History of South India: Issues and Interpretations. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
46.
KohlPhilip L.1987. ‘The Use and Abuse of World Systems Theory: The Case of the Pristine West Asian State’, in Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory Vol. X, edited by SchifferMichael B.. San Diego: Academic Press: 1–35.
47.
KulkeHermann. 1995. ‘The Early and the Imperial Kingdom: A Processual Model of Integrative State Formation in Early Medieval India’, in The State in India 1000-1700, edited by KulkeHermann. New Delhi: Oxford University Press: 233–62.
48.
KulkeHermann. 1995. ‘The Study of the State of the State in Pre-Modern India’, in The State in India 1000-1700, edited by KulkeHermann. New Delhi: Oxford University Press: 1–47.
49.
KulkeHermann. 2015. ‘The Integrative Model of State Formation in Early Medieval India: Some Historiographic Remarks’, in Interrogating Political Systems: Integrative Processes and States in Pre-Modern India, edited by SahuBhairabi Prasad and KulkeHermann. New Delhi: Manohar: 55–80
50.
LefebvreHenri. 1991. The Production of Space, trans. D. Nicholson-Smith. Oxford: Blackwell.
51.
LewisBarry. 2001. ‘The Mysore Kingdom at AD 1800: Archaeological applications of the Mysore survey of Colin Mackenzie’. South Asian Archaeology, vol. 2557–65.
52.
LightfootKent G.1995. ‘Culture Contact Studies: Redefining the Relationship between Prehistoric and Historical Archaeology’. American Antiquity, vol. 60, no. 2199–217.
53.
MichellGeorge. 1992. ‘City as Cosmogram: The Circular Plan of Warangal’. South Asian Studies, Vol. 8, no. 11–18.
54.
MitchellTimothy. 1999. ‘Society, Economy, and the State Effect’, in State/Culture: State Formation after the Cultural Turn, edited by SteinmetzGeorge. Ithaca: Cornell University Press: 76–98.
55.
MooreHenrietta L.1986. Space, Text and Gender: An Anthropological Study of the Marakwet of Kenya. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
56.
MorrisonKathleen D.1995. Fields of Victory: Vijayanagara and the Course of Intensification: Contributions to the University of California Archaeological Research Facility No. 53. Berkeley: Archaeological Research Facility, University of California.
57.
MorrisonKathleen D.2001. ‘Coercion, Resistance, and Hierarchy: Local Processes and Imperial Strategies in the Vijayanagara Empire’, in Empires: Perspectives from Archaeology and History, edited by AlcockSusan E., D’AltroyTerence N., MorrisonKathleen D. and SinopoliCarla M.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 252–78.
58.
MorrisonKathleen D.2001. ‘Sources, Approaches, Definitions’, in Empires: Perspectives from Archaeology and History, edited by SusanAlcock E., D’AltroyTerence N., MorrisonKathleen D. and SinopoliCarla M.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 1–9
59.
MorrisonKathleen D.2009. Daroji Valley: Landscape History, Place, and the Making of a Dryland Reservoir System. New Delhi: Manohar Publishers & Distributors.
60.
MorrisonKathleen D. and LycettMark T.. 1994. ‘Centralized Power, Centralized Authority? Ideological Claims and Archaeological Patterns’. Asian Perspectives, vol. 32, no. 2327–50.
61.
MorrisonKathleen D. and LycettMark T.. 1997. ‘Inscriptions as Artifacts: Precolonial South India and the Analysis of Texts’. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, vol. 4, nos. 3–4: 215–37.
62.
MurtónBrian. 2001. ‘The Emergence of Sedentary Agriculture in Interior Tamil Nadu in the Thirteenth Century’, in Structure and Society in Early South India: Essays in Honour of Noboru Karashima edited by HallKenneth. New Delhi: Oxford University Press: 157–180.
63.
NaumMagdalena. 2010. ‘Re-Emerging Frontiers: Postcolonial Theory and Historical Archaeology of the borderlands’. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory vol. 17, no. 2101–31.
64.
PatilC. S. and PatilV. C.. 1998. Inscriptions of Karnataka Vol. IV: Inscriptions of Raichur District. Mysore: Directorate of Archaeology and Museums.
65.
PauketatTimothy R.2000. The ‘Tragedy of the Commoners’, in Agency in Archaeology, edited by DobresMarcia-Anne and RobbJohn. London: Routledge: 129–45.
66.
PauketatTimothy R.2001. ‘Practice and History in Archaeology: An Emerging Paradigm’. Anthropological Theory, Vol. 1, no. 173–98.
67.
PauketatTimothy R. and EmersonThomas E.. 1991. ‘The Ideology of Authority and the Power of the Pot’. American Anthropologist, vol. 93, no. 4919–41.
68.
PollockSheldon. 2003. Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia. Berkeley: University of California Press.
69.
PollockSheldon. 2006. The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India. Berkeley: University of California Press.
70.
RicePrudence M.1998. ‘Contexts of Contact and Change: Peripheries, Frontiers, and Boundaries’ in Studies in Culture Contact: Interaction, Culture Change, and Archaeology, edited by CusickJames G.. Carbondale: Center for Archaeological Investigations, Southern Illinois University: 44–66.
71.
RoutledgeBruce. 2014. Archaeology and State Theory: Subjects and Objects of Power. New York: Bloomsbury.
72.
SahuBhairabi P. and KulkeHermann. 2016. Interrogating Political Systems: Integrative Processes and States in Pre-Modern India. New Delhi: Manohar.
73.
SchortmanEdward M.2014. ‘Networks of Power in Archaeology’. Annual Review of Anthropology, vol. 43167–82.
74.
SchortmanEdward and NakamuraSeiichi. 1991. ‘A Crisis of Identity: Late Classic Competition and Interaction on the Southeast Maya Periphery’. Latin American Antiquity, vol. 2, no. 4311–36.
75.
SchortmanEdward M. and UrbanPatricia A.. 1991. ‘Patterns of Late Preclassic Interactions and the Formation of Complex Society in the Southeast Maya Periphery’, in The Formation of Complex Society in Southeastern Mesoamerica, edited by Fowler Jr.William R.Boca Raton: CRC Press: 121–42.
76.
SchortmanEdward M. and UrbanPatricia A.. 1992. Resources, Power, and Interregional Interaction. New York: Springer Science & Business Media.
77.
SchortmanEdward M. and UrbanPatricia A.. 1994. ‘Living on the Edge: Core/Periphery Relations in Ancient Southeastern Mesoamerica’. Current Anthropology, vol. 35, no. 4401–30.
78.
SchortmanEdward M. and UrbanPatricia A.. 2011. ‘Power, Memory, and Prehistory: Constructing and Erasing Political Landscapes in the Naco Valley, Northwestern Honduras’. American Anthropologist, vol. 113, no. 15–21.
79.
SinopoliCarla M.1988. ‘The Organization of Craft Production at Vijayanagara, South India’. American Anthropologist, Vol. 90, no. 3580–97.
80.
SinopoliCarla M.1993. Pots and Palaces: The Earthenware Ceramics of the Noblemen’s Quarter of Vijayanagara. Vol. 1. New Delhi: South Asia Books.
81.
SinopoliCarla M.1994. ‘The Archaeology of Empires’. Annual Review of Anthropology, vol. 23, no. 1159–80.
82.
SinopoliCarla M.2007. ‘Empires’ in Archaeology at the Millennium: A Sourcebook, edited by FeinmanGary M. and PriceDouglas T.. New York: Springer Science & Business Media: 439–74.
83.
SinopoliCarla M.2003. The Political Economy of Craft Production: Crafting Empire in South India, c. 1350–1650. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
84.
SinopoliCarla M and MorrisonKathleen D.. 1995. ‘Dimensions of Imperial Control the Vijayanagara Capital’. American Anthropologist, vol. 97, no. 183–96.
85.
SmithAdam T.1999. ‘The Making of an Urartian Landscape in Southern Transcaucasia: A Study of Political Architectonics’. American Journal of Archaeology, vol. 103, no. 145–71.
86.
SmithAdam T.2001. ‘The Limitations of Doxa: Agency and Subjectivity from an Archaeological Point of View’. Journal of Social Archaeology, vol. 1, no. 2155–71.
87.
SmithAdam T.2003. The Political Landscape: Constellations of Authority in Early Complex Polities. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
88.
SmithAdam T.2011. ‘Archaeologies of Sovereignty’. Annual Review of Anthropology, vol. 40415–32.
89.
SmithMonica L.2016. ‘Urban Infrastructure as Materialized Consensus’. World Archaeology, vol. 48, no. 1164–78.
90.
SojaEdward W.1989. Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory. London: Verso.
91.
SteinGil J.2002. ‘From Passive Periphery to Active Agents: Emerging Perspectives in the Archaeology of Interregional Interaction’. American Anthropologist, vol. 104, no. 3903–16.
92.
StockettMiranda K.2005. ‘Approaching Social Practice through Access Analysis at Las Canoas, Honduras’. Latin American Antiquity, vol. 16, no. 4385–407.
93.
SubbarayaluY.1973. Political Geography of the Chola Country. Madras: State Department of Archaeology, Government of Tamil Nadu.
94.
SubbarayaluY.2001. ‘Arasus of the Pudukkottai Region and the Nayaka System’, in Structure and Society in Early South India: Essays in Honor of Noboru Karashima, edited by HallKenneth. New Delhi: Oxford University Press: 235–50.
95.
SuvrathanUthara. 2014. ‘Spoiled for Choice? The Sacred Landscapes of Ancient and Early Medieval Banavasi’. South Asian Studies, vol. 30, no. 2206–29.
96.
TalbotCynthia. 1991. ‘Temples, Donors, and Gifts: Patterns of Patronage in Thirteenth-Century South India’. The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 50, no. 2308–40.
97.
TalbotCynthia. 1994. ‘Political Intermediaries in Kakatiya Andhra, 1175-1325’. The Indian Economic & Social History Review, vol. 31, no. 3261–89.
98.
TalbotCynthia. 2001. Precolonial India in Practice: Society, Region, and Identity in Medieval Andhra. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
99.
VossBarbara L.2008. The Archaeology of Ethnogenesis: Race and Sexuality in Colonial San Francisco. Berkeley: University of California Press.
100.
WagonerPhillip B.1996. ‘Sultan among Hindu Kings’: Dress, Titles, and the Islamicization of Hindu Culture at Vijayanagara. The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 55, no. 4851–80.
101.
WallersteinImmanuel Maurice. 2004. World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction. Durham, London, Duke University Press.
102.
WolfEric R.1990. ‘Distinguished Lecture: Facing Power—Old Insights, New Questions’. American Anthropologist, vol. 92, no. 3586–96.
