About

This website is visualized as a resource for the wider public interested in recent advances and discoveries in the archaeology of South Asia. The content is curated and reviewed by scholars and students who are actively working and studying in the field of South Asian archaeology. 

FOUNDING EDITOR

Uthara Suvrathan works at the intersection of archaeology and history to examine the organization of polities and places on the margins of larger states and empires in pre-modern South Asia. She is also interested in archaeological approaches to landscape studies and in issues of pre-modern trade and contact across the Indian Ocean, with a focus on the ways in which the Indian Ocean system impacts early ports and land-based polities along the west coast of India. In addition, she works on issues of museum education, public outreach and the digital humanities, with a particular interest in the sharing of information among researchers, as well as between academics and the wider public.

EDITORS 

NEWS AND EVENTS EDITOR

Shobhna Iyer is a MPhil candidate at Jawaharlal Nehru University, where she is studying the establishment of the Kakatiya capital Warangal. She is also a freelance academic copyeditor.

CONTRIBUTORS

Salila Kulshreshtha secured her PhD in History from the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her doctoral research focused on tracing how the spatial relocation of sacred sculptures brings about a change in their identity and ritual purpose. brings about a change in their identity and ritual purpose. She has worked on issues of urban heritage and heritage education with INTACH and with the Dr Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum, Mumbai. She has taught Art history, History and Humanities in Mumbai at Rizvi College of Architecture and Indian Education Society’s College of Architecture and in the USA at the Old Dominion University and Virginia Wesleyan College. Her recent publications include From Temple to Museums: Colonial Collection and Uma Mahesvara Icons in Middle Ganga Valley (Routledge: 2018); and research papers ‘Removable Heritage: Nalanda Beyond the Mahavihara’ and ‘Between Shrines and Monuments: Heritage of Sacred Spaces in South Bihar.’ She has also published with the online journal wire.in. She is currently based in Dubai and teaches an online course on Indian art for the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, University of Oxford, UK. Her research interests include religious iconography, afterlives of shrines, colonial archaeology and the making of museums in South Asia.  

Deepthi Murali is a PhD candidate in the Department of Art History at the University of Illinois at Chicago. her dissertation focuses on courtly arts and transcultural politics of eighteenth and nineteenth century Kerala, tracing productions, circulations and historical and contemporary relationships between art and its human counterparts. She is interested in issues of transculturality, material culture and the agency of things, decorative arts and aesthetics, links between art and ecology, the preservation of built heritage and the decolonization of museum spaces. For more, visit Deepthi's website.

Himanshu Prabha Ray is recipient of the Anneliese Maier research award of the Humboldt Foundation (2013 – 2018) and is affiliated to the Distant Worlds Programme, Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich. She is former Professor, Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University and Former Chairperson, National Monuments Authority, Ministry of Culture. She is series editor of Routledge Archaeology of Religion in South Asia. Her recent books include Archaeology and Buddhism in South Asia, Routledge, 2018; The Return of the Buddha: Ancient Symbols for a New Nation, Routledge, New Delhi, 2014; The Archaeology of Seafaring in Ancient South Asia, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003, as also edited volumes: Buddhism and Gandhara: An Archaeology of Museum Collections, Routledge, 2018;  Satish Chandra and Himanshu Prabha Ray edited, The Sea, Identity and History: From the Bay of Bengal to the South China Sea, Manohar Publishers, 2013.

Arjun Rao obtained his PhD from Deccan College Post Graduate and Research Institute, Pune in 2018. Arjun does research on the Late Prehistoric (Neolithic and Iron Age) archaeology of South India, focusing on landscapes and settlement patterns. He is working on three different ecological regions of Karnataka in the north, central and western Ghats. His project, the Koppa Archaeological Research Project was supported by the National Geographic Society, Washington DC; the Brahmagiri Landscapes and Settlement Survey (BLSS)  and 'Referring Raymond Allchin's Thesis' as supported by the Nehru Trust-UK, London. He has published 20 research papers, including two in Current Science (Published by the Indian Academy of Sciences), the Journal of Archaeological Research in Asia (Elsevier Publications) and Springer Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. He has peer-reviewed for four journals of international repute. He is currently Assistant Professor in the School of Business Studies and Social Sciences, CHRIST (Deemed to be University), Bannerghatta Road Campus, Hulimavu, Bangalore, India. E-mail: arjunrao93@gmail.com