The Archaeology of an Early Historic Town in Central India

The case study offered in this book is based upon an archaeological examination of the Early Historic town site of Kaundinyapura in central India. In the Early Historic period (third century BC to fourth century AD) the Indian subcontinent presents widespread evidence for long-distance exchange in durable goods at a time when political entities were relatively short-lived and had few resources to invest in the facilitation of exchange. Despite a lack of centrally provided economic...
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The case study offered in this book is based upon an archaeological examination of the Early Historic town site of Kaundinyapura in central India. In the Early Historic period (third century BC to fourth century AD) the Indian subcontinent presents widespread evidence for long-distance exchange in durable goods at a time when political entities were relatively short-lived and had few resources to invest in the facilitation of exchange. Despite a lack of centrally provided economic infrastructure, the communities of the subcontinent shared a material culture that demonstrated communication about style as well as the physical movement of objects. Even small towns like Kaundinyapura were participants in these patterns of regional exchange, in which households engaged in production and distribution activities that enabled them to maintain links with the wider region through the consumption of a shared corpus of material goods.