While art historians have long extolled the intellectual and artistic achievements of the medieval temple art of Orissa, quantitatively and qualitatively its archaeology trails behind that of most of South Asia. Until recently, archaeology has remained a matter essentially of local interest. Characteristic of the archaeology of Orissa are gaping informational voids held together by notions of a linear development of artifacts within and between periods. Despite rare informational stepping stones, archaeologically early historic western Orissa and the adjacent Chhattisgarh region are best described as archaeological terra incognita. Spread over an enormous surface (156,000 km2, i.e. a little less than half as large as present-day Germany) few prehistoric and early historic are proven or documented in Orissa. The present study documents new survey and excavation on the early history of Orissa, from the iron age up to roughly the Gupta age, and attempts to close or articulate some the research lacunae. A main task below is to make Orissa’s little-known archaeological resources readily available, build on this documentation, and catalyse future work. The dearth of scholarly attention to Orissa.
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