Overview for The Ancient Routes of the Deccan and the Southern Peninsula
Rooted in an earlier field-study (1999-2002) of the routes which linked the Ganga plain with the Deccan, this volume, based on a subsequent field study (2004-2006), studies on the ground the network of routes which linked the Konkan coast and its Maharashtra and Karnataka hinterland with a vast region from the mouth of the Godavari to the tip of the southern peninsula. Among other things, it shows the main historical and geographical linkage between the various parts of the southern peninsula and also highlights how the entire chain of historical and generally pre-industrial ports from Umbergaon north of Thana in Maharashtra to Srikakulam in Andhra was linked all along to its hinterland. To break the historical and geographical details and complexities of the vast Peninsular mass south of the Ganga plain down to a few essential geographical lines along which its historical movements may be said to have taken place was a truly formidable academic exercise, but the present volume and the earlier one on the links between the Ganga plain and the Deccan have established their essential orientations through a careful mix of varied scholarship and fieldwork.
Dilip K Chakrabarti (Author)
Dilip K. Chakrabarty is University lecturer in south Asian archaeology at Cambridge University. His recent publications include Archaeological Geography of the Ganga Plain: the Lower and the Middle Ganga (Delhi 2001) and The Archaeology of European Expansion in India: Gujarat, c. 16th-18th Centuries (in Press). His current field-research programmes include a historical geographical study of the upper Ganga plain and a similar study of the routes which linked the Ganga plain with the Deccan.
Bagchee
