Kathleen D. Morrison

The intensification of production: Archaeological approaches

In this paper I reexamine the Boserup model of agricultural intensification and archaeological reaction to it. Although causes have been extensively debated, little attention has been paid to process, and even those who reject the causal efficacy of population may adopt other aspects of the Boserup model. These “unexamined aspects” include the assumption that intensification proceeds along a single course, characterized by gradual decreases in the frequency of cropping. I suggest that the course of intensification is complex and variable and that, only by breaking down the process of intensification into its component strategies, can we come to an understanding of both the causes and the courses of intensification.

Trade, urbanism, and agricultural expansion: Buddhist monastic institutions and the state in the Early Historic western Deccan

Abstract The western Deccan is well‐known for its spectacular rock‐cut Buddhist architecture and its extensive Buddhist monastic complexes. Many of these structures were cut during the Satavahana period, the first large‐scale state polity in western India. In order to understand how Buddhist monastic institutions were integrated into the social, political, and economic organization of this period, it is necessary to begin to consider how production and distribution of produce and craft goods were structured and how both Buddhist monastic institutions and political authorities were involved in these patterns. Specifically, I examine the hypothesized link between Buddhism, trade, and state formation and suggest that no simple causal relationship can be discerned.

Inscriptions as Artifacts: Precolonial South India and the Analysis of Texts

This paper examines one assemblage of texts from southern India, stone inscriptions of the Vijayanagara period, and considers both how these texts have been studied and how that history of research has structured our understanding of the past. We ask how these texts might be interpreted differently, (1) under different conditions of sampling and recovery, with a specific focus on in-field locations of inscriptions, and (2) as sources of information combined with archaeological data. We suggest that traditional source-side criticism of texts might be profitably expanded routinely to include contextual analysis, such as archaeologists apply to studies of artifacts.

Dharmic Projects, Imperial Reservoirs, and New Temples of India: An Historical Perspective on Dams in India

As international attention continues to focus on large dam projects across Asia, it is worth noting that conflicts over the politics of and environmental changes caused by dams in India are not new. Population dislocation, siltation, disease, floods caused by catastrophic dam failure, raised water tables, high costs and low returns—all of these concerns, and others, can be discussed in the context of reservoir projects ten, one hundred, or even one thousand years old. In this paper, I identify some of the major issues in the political ecology of contemporary dam projects and show how these same issues have played out in southern India over the last thousand years, suggesting that historical attention to the cultural and political context of reservoir construction might help us to understand some aspects of contemporary conflicts.

Economic diversity and integration in a pre-colonial Indian empire

Abstract Empires contain a multiplicity of productive systems and strategies which may be differentially integrated with each other and the center. This paper examines six aspects of agricultural and craft production in the south Indian empire of Vijayanagara (c. AD 1340–1700). Agricultural production in the diverse ecological zones of the empire was integrated primarily through Hindu temples, and trade and craft production through temples and taxation. The economic value and political role of the goods produced, as well as the location of the producers, were the principal factors in determining the nature and degree of imperial involvement in production.

Foragers and forager-traders in South Asian worlds: Some thoughts from the last 10,000 years

South Asia is sometimes seen as a particularly good place to study the earliest periods of human history because of the presence of contemporary peoples who gather and hunt, people usually referred to as “tribals,” a label first affixed by the British but which has had considerable staying power (Singh, 1997:33; Morrison, 2002a:35). These groups are often viewed as natural analogues for the past, providing us with information about environmental adaptations, social organization, and the like. Much (but of course not all) ethnoarchaeology in South Asia is predicated on simple parallels between contemporary tribals and Paleolithic or Mesolithic peoples, a strategy which tends to erase the actual histories of thesegroups,andanassumptionof timelessness which recent research (e.g., Stiles, 1993; Murthy, 1994; Morrison and Junker, 2002) has shown is not well-founded. Even where the complexhistories of theHolocene are acknowledged, many still feel that “tribals” offer the best analogues for the past, based on a notion of some essential tribal cultural (sometimes even “racial”) identity as the link which joins the past and the present. In this chapter, I review a fewexamples of long-termhistories of foraging groups in South Asia and, in so doing, suggest an alternative framework in which hunting and gathering, past and present, is seen as a set of strategic practices rather than as an essential identity, a distinction which allows us to view the complex, entangled histories of South Asian foragers and forager-traders not as masks obscuring “real” economic, ecological, and social relations but instead as resources for learning about the life-possibilities of those who lived in the distant past.

Archaeology: failure and how to avoid it.

Nothing lasts for ever, not least human civilizations. There are many reasons why societies stand or fall, and these lessons from the past require investigation at various places and on various timescales.

The “Fall” of Vijayanagara Reconsidered: Political Destruction and Historical Construction in South Indian History 1

Abstract The eponymous capital of Vijayanagara was largely abandoned following the defeat of the imperial army at Talikota in 1565. The city was burned and looted and its monumental temple complexes, gateways, and images left in ruins. Despite large-scale damage to architecture in the city, however, the level and focus of destruction was strikingly variable. In this paper, we draw on the material record of late Vijayanagara temple complexes and other archaeological evidence to examine patterns of differentially distributed political violence. We suggest that these patterns may be understood, in part, in terms of the contemporary politics of sovereignty, incorporation, and reconstitution of elite authority. Drawing on these observations, we discuss the role of commemorative destruction as well as post-1565 temple rededications and abandonments in the afterlife of Vijayanagara as a social space. In particular, we examine the potential of monumental violence to act as a symbol or to index social memory through a creative and fluid process of instituting claims about the past, heritage, authenticity, and the nature of the present.

Risky business: Rice and inter-colonial dependencies in the Indian and Atlantic Oceans

In this paper we are concerned with some issues of inter-colonial dependency, especially in food and with a focus on rice that both directly linked the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds and that highlight some structural issues of colonialism, globalization, and food security more generally. This paper examines rice as a staple commodity, one that both reflected and generated inter-colonial dependencies in both ocean worlds, and how that dependency was ultimately fraught. Because the rice trade did not operate in isolation, we also of necessity include some discussion of important non-food crops such as cotton and jute. In the Caribbean, to greater or lesser extents, the colonial plantation economies relied on imported rice and other foodstuffs, needs supplied by other “knots” in the web, especially in the Carolina low country. Other British colonial possessions, too, were developed as “rice bowls” critical to the sustenance of colonized peoples and the support of commercial crops. One of these newer service colonies was British Burma, the formerly sparsely settled delta of the Irrawaddy River. No matter which ocean we center our focus on, and indeed across the “recentered” empire at large, in the Early Modern period rice was a risky business. By making this point we hope to frame a larger conversation about inter-colonial dependencies and the scales at which it is best realized.

Doorways to the Divine: Vijayanagara Reservoirs and Rural Devotional Landscapes

The area around the city of Vijayanagara saw a large-scale expansion in irrigation works between the mid-fourteenth and late sixteenth centuries. Of these, reservoirs or ‘tanks’ played an important role in extending farming into areas beyond the reach of perennial irrigation. Reservoirs were linked to Hindu temples, not only through networks of patronage, but also physically, in aspects of form and decoration. Indeed, reservoirs can be thought of as temples themselves, as well as statements of power and authority, functional objects, and tangible connections to larger social and conceptual worlds. This paper presents reservoirs in four ways: as agricultural features, as (political) monuments, as oceans, and as temples. This juxtaposition is made possible only because of the intersection of textual representation and material form, different modes of representation which may be critically evaluated and compared. Reservoirs formed one part of a complex rural landscape of devotion that included field shrines, hero stones, and even archaeological sites of earlier eras. Through the long-term use-lives of reservoirs, we can see the ways in which rural devotion and practice both responded to the specifics of local histories and, over time, reshaped regional landscapes.