Essays in Indian Protohistory

In the course of his long academic career, Prof. D.P. Agrawal has worked with the Archaeological Survey of India, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bombay and Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), Ahmedabad. His research contributions have been varied and multi-disciplinary –mainly in the fields of archaeology, radiocarbon & TL dating, archaeometallurgy, and palaeoenvironment. Prof. Agrawal has done extensive work on archaeometallurgy of the Harappa Culture, the Copper Hoards Culture, and also in the Central Himalayan region. Prof. Agrawal has specialized in the use of scientific techniques for archaeological research. He has also made fundamental theoretical contributions in the fields of language and evolution, flaking mechanics, archaeological theories and concepts of time. He retired as a senior professor and chairman of a large multidisciplinary group at Physical Research Laboratory. He has organized and attended numerous national and international symposia. He has given invited talks at the leading centers of archaeological and palaeoenvironmental research both in India and abroad. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania and International Research Centre at Kyoto for a year each. He has published 14 books and about 250 papers. He is a member of the advisory boards of World Archaeology, Le’Anthropologie and has edited Man & Environment for a number of years. He has been the Chairman of Indian Society for Prehistoric and Quaternary Research, member of the Central Advisory Board of Archaeology, and has been associated with several other academic committees – both national and international. He is a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Science.

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.