With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Monica L. Smith and a team of colleagues from the United States and India will conduct three field seasons of research at the archaeological site of Talapada in eastern India to investigate the role of towns in urbanizing environments. Talapada was occupied in the Early Historic period (4th century BC to 3rd century AD), an era marked by momentous change in the Indian subcontinent that included the development of Buddhism, the first extensive use of writing, and the emergence of cities.
Talapada is a recently discovered site surrounded by a massive encircling rampart that is an exact replica, at one-quarter size, of the fortification wall at the nearby urban center of Sisupalgarh where Smith and colleagues have previously worked. Investigations at the site of Talapada present an opportunity to evaluate how towns interacted with the region's dominant center. Talapada's inhabitants clearly were engaged in some political linkages as exhibited in rampart construction. However, the variability of artifact types at the site suggests that the town was not simply a small-size version of Sisupalgarh and that the inhabitants may have generated and sustained their own distinctive economic, social, and ritual traditions. The research will particularly focus on Talapada's relationship with its larger neighbor before and after the "Kalinga War" of the third century BC in which the region was briefly conquered by a larger neighboring state.
The project will be the first in India to utilize the same methods of investigation, including geophysical survey and excavations, to examine sites of different sizes in the Early Historic period. The excavations will provide data on artifacts and architecture, as well as generating a comprehensive series of radiocarbon dates to identify the stages of the site's development over time. In conjunction with the excavations, the team also will utilize non-destructive geophysical survey to trace subsurface architectural features in neighborhood-sized areas at Talapada to examine social and spatial configurations that also will be compared with Sisupalgarh.
The intellectual merit of the project is encompassed in its investigation of towns as intermediate-sized population centers in an urbanizing landscape. Through survey and excavation, the project will enable the analysis of the social, economic, and political developments of South Asia's Early Historic era from the perspective of ordinary people. The data will be structured for comparison with other archaeologically known regions in which the inhabitants of long-lived towns and cities created flexible networks of interaction that enabled them to thrive even during periods of regional conflict.
The broader impacts of the research project include significant international collaboration between Indian and US researchers and students; provision of data for theses and dissertations for both Indian and US students; training of students in archaeological field techniques and analysis; and provision of resources for university classes and public presentations.
