Introduction

Across the rocky hills and open plains of South India's northern Karnataka region, a remarkably diverse and extensive archaeological landscape documents a dynamic human history of social and environmental interactions extending thousands of years into the past. This region's late prehistoric/early historic archaeological record consists of three lengthy periods of human occupation: the Neolithic period (c. 27001200 BC) during which the socio-political relations of small farmer-herder communities appear to have been largely egalitarian; the Iron Age (c. 1200300 BC) during which evidence for marked (perhaps ranked) social distinctions and widespread regional conflict appear; and the Early Historic period (c. 300 BCAD 500) when urban settlements emerge within regional state polities. Decades of archaeological research have implicated changes in agro-pastoral production, the development of metallurgical technologies, and novel approaches to settlement organisation as important contributing factors towards the construction and maintenance of South Indian socio-political differences and inequalities (cf. Reference MoortiMoorti 1994; Reference BrubakerBrubaker 2001), yet these claims are admittedly based on empirically thin and geographically diffuse data.

Figure 1.

The MARP study area and survey grid (20m contour interval).

The Maski Archaeological Research Project

The Maski Archaeological Research Project (MARP) is collecting new archaeological and environmental data from a regional context with which to assess the recursive relationships of settlement, metallurgical and agro-pastoral practices with the development and institutionalisation of social differences and inequalities during the South Indian Iron Age and Early Historic period. The focus of this research is a 64km² study area surrounding the large multi-period settlement site of Maski, located at the foot of the Durgada Gudda outcrop in the Raichur District of the state of Karnataka (Figure 1). Archaeological research conducted during the mid twentieth century defined an occupational sequence at Maski spanning from the Neolithic to the Medieval period (Reference YazdhaniYazdhani 1938; Gordon & Reference GordonGordon 1943; Reference ThaparThapar 1957). Archaeological exploration in the region has also documented an Early Historic edict commissioned by the third Mauryan Emperor Asoka (r. 268231 BC) adjacent to the Maski settlement, which has provoked considerable speculation about the political relationship between this settlement and region, and the Ganges-based Mauryan Empire centred more than 1400km to the north. Beyond this, little else was known about the study area's rich archaeological landscape prior to the present research.

Preliminary results

The first stage of our research is a systematic survey of the study region, of which we have completed two field seasons. The survey has recorded 102 archaeological sites including a variety of settlements, artefact scatters, single megaliths, megalithic complexes, iron-working and gold ore-processing locales, rock art panels, occupied rock shelters, modified rock pools, reservoirs, and medieval temples and shrines (Figure 2).

Figure 2.

Durgada Gudda outcrop (top); rock art panel (bottom left); passage chamber megalith (bottom centre); stone circle megalith (bottom right).

Figure 3.

Iron Age archaeological sites on and around the Durgada Gudda outcrop. Red = Iron Age settlements; grey = cemeteries; blue = the Early Historic period extent of MARP-97 (5m contour interval).

The earliest settlement activity dates to the Neolithic period, which, with only two settlements, is rather sparse in comparison to other periods. With the onset of the Iron Age there is a significant increase in the number of settlement occupations, 13 in total (Figure 3).

These sites range in size from c. 0.5 to 3ha and occupy a range of contexts. One, MARP-82, is located on the highest peak of the Dugada Gudda outcrop directly above a larger and likely contemporaneous settlement (MARP-30) occupying a long, wide swale in the outcrop immediately below. A large stone wall surrounds MARP-82 and stone alignments and terracing clearly delineate separate occupational areas, in a similar fashion to Iron Age settlements documented in greater detail in the Tungabhadra River Corridor, where distinct residential groups built symbolically and socially differentiated residential spaces. The proximity, yet relative isolation, of the MARP-82 residential spaces from those of MARP-30 is noteworthy, suggesting the possibility of socially distinct residential groups; but while the occupants of MARP-82 could easily access the larger lower settlement, their own living spaces remained secluded, protected and even shielded from view by those living below.

With the transition to the Early Historic period, the total number of sites are dramatically reduced; the only settlement is the large 15ha site of Maski (MARP-97) located along the eastern base of the Durgada Gudda outcrop, the spatial extent of which was quantified for the first time in 2012 (Figure 3). It appears that settlement both around the outcrop itself, and tentatively across the study area, was concentrated and consolidated during the Early Historic period into a single location five times the size of the region's largest Iron Age settlement. This pattern of Early Historic consolidation into fewer, larger settlements is also recorded in the Early Historic Landscapes of the Tungabhadra Corridor study area 100km to the south, one of only a handful of other systematically surveyed regions in Karnataka (e.g. Reference Sinopoli, Basa and SawantSinopoli 2009; Reference BauerBauer 2010).

Figure 4.

Burials exposed by sediment quarrying at MARP-79; Burial 1 (bottom left and right); Burial 2 (top left and right).

In addition to the settlement, we have recorded a number of mortuary contexts including a large Iron Age cemetery (MARP-79), a site substantially destroyed by quarrying. This site contains a range of burial forms, several of which were exposed by mechanised sediment quarrying (Figure 4). Comparative analysis of formal variation in burial type and associated ceramics suggest that the cemetery may date to the very early Iron Age with continued use into the Early Historic period. Further study of MARP-79 holds enormous potential for the analysis of developing social differences in this region.

We have also recorded several Iron Age and Early Historic period sites where metallurgical activities were practised. These include iron-smithing locales at Iron Age settlement sites, an in-filled gold mine shaft first identified by Leonard Reference MunnMunn (1934), and several gold ore beneficiation sites, including MARP-8, an expansive distribution of grinding slicks that contain deep cylindrical collection receptacles, and associated grinding stones (Figures 5 & 6). MARP-8 is located on the west side of the Durgada Gudda outcrop adjacent to a large seam of quartzite (the source of the ore) and a small set of artificial terraces (MARP-7). The spatial relationship of MARP-8 with MARP-1, the Asokan edict, is of considerable interest; the edict is located near the base of the western slope of the outcrop on one of a limited number of routes uphill to the ore-processing area, less than 120m uphill. The proximity of the edict to the gold ore-processing zone, and the large Early Historic settlement (MARP-97) located on the opposite side of the hill suggests that Mauryan involvement in the area may have included staking claims to the region's significant gold ore deposits. At least two passage chamber megaliths mark other access points to MARP-8, suggesting further, and perhaps competing, claims for access to this important mineralogical resource.

Figure 5.

The location of MARP-1 and MARP-8 (5m contour interval).

Figure 6.

Grinding slicks (left) and grinding stone (right) at MARP-8.

Finally, our research has collected some important data on agro-pastoral practices, including a wide range of rock bruisings depicting cattle, as well as several modified rock pools, a large reservoir feature (associated with both Iron Age and Medieval ceramics), and a small isolated Iron Age site on the open peneplain that we interpret as either a pastoralist camp or an agricultural field station. Further work with surface collections and proposed analyses of sediments and environmental proxies (e.g. pollen, phytoliths) should resolve dating and use of the large reservoir feature as well as provide additional data on regional environmental transformations.

Conclusion

Our research at Maski is ongoing and, to date, our findings, while preliminary, point to some exciting patterns of change in settlement and social organisation, as well as providing some limited support for long-held speculation regarding the politics of interactions between the Mauryan state and the Early Historic settlement community at Maski. Small-scale Neolithic settlement in the region surrounding Maski appears to have expanded and diversified considerably during the Iron Age, when settlement numbers and areas grew, and internal spatial organisation became increasingly differentiated. This corresponds with a marked diversification in mortuary practices displayed at MARP-79 and other sites in South India. By Early Historic times, the large site at MARP-97 suggests significant settlement centralisation, contemporary with the engagement of its community with the political objectives of the Mauryan Empirea relationship that appears to have been at least partially motivated by the prospection and processing local gold ores. Our ongoing research will continue to explore the nature of these relationships and the environmental conditions that people both created and inhabited during these transformations.