South Asia Before the Buddha

Undergraduate / Graduate

South Asia has a rich historical record, from the very beginnings of our species to the present, and yet the earlier part of this record is surprisingly little-known outside specialist circles. This course provides a broad overview of South Asian archaeology and early history, from the beginnings of agricultural production to the expansion of states and empires in the early days of textual records. We cover critical anthropological processes such as the origins and expansion of agriculture, the development of one of the world's first urban societies-the Harappan or Indus civilization-the growth and institutionalization of social inequalities, and changing contexts of social and religious life. While the course actually extends a bit beyond the time of the Buddha, its major focus is on the periods up to and including the Early Historic. No prior experience of either South Asia or archaeology is assumed; indeed, we will think quite a bit about the nature of evidence and about how we know about the more distant past.