The politics of spatial renovation: Reconfiguring ritual places and practice in Iron Age and Early Historic South India

Abstract

In South India, during the Iron Age and Early Historic Period, the space and meaning of certain ritual places were occupied and renovated by particular social groups in order to strategically meditate transitional logics of value and power. In northern Karnataka, during the Iron Age (1200–300 BC), megalithic monuments were built on earlier Neolithic ritual places (ashmounds), or materials from these places were removed and incorporated into megaliths constructed nearby, appropriating their space, material, and meaning, contributing to the construction of developing social distinctions. In the lower Krishna River Valley, during the Early Historic Period (300 BC–AD 300), Buddhist monastic communities constructed architectural complexes on, or proximal to, extant megalithic mortuary complexes, appropriating the space and meaning of these important ritual places. This paper explores how these strategic appropriations of socially significant places inscribed the landscape with novel forms of politically salient ritual architecture reordering the experience and perception of socio-ritual practice and place.