Indian Archaeological Research: Professor Carla M. Sinopoli

  

Carla M. Sinopoli, Professor of Anthropology and Director and Curator in the Museum of Anthropology, is an archaeologist who has conducted field research in India since 1983.  Professor Sinopoli is currently co-director of the “Early Historic Landscapes of the Tungabhadra Corridor” (EHLTC) project, a collaborative excavation project based in northern Karnataka in South India.  The EHLTC project seeks to understand social, economic, and political lifeways and transformation among agricultural communities in inland South India during the first millennium BC South Indian Iron Age.  This was a time of remarkable change in the region.  At the start of the Iron Age, around 1200-1000 BC, we see the development of new technologies and burial practices and the creation of large durable sedentary communities; by the end of the period in the late centuries BC, we see the development of urban and state level communities, linked by a web of social, ideological and economic relation to each other and to north Indian states and empires (as well as to Sri Lanka, Southeast Asia and the Mediterranean).  To explore these issues, Sinopoli, her colleagues, and students are conducting excavations at the Iron Age town of Kadebakele, discovered by the team in their prior research in the region.  Excavation seasons were held in 2003 and 2005, with at least three more seasons planned for the future.  This research is conducted in collaboration with the Karnataka Department of Archaeology and Museums, and with scholars, Dr. Sharada Srinivasan, an archaeometallurgist based at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore, and Dr. Kajal Shah, a ceramic specialist and recent PhD from MS University in Vadodara (Baroda).  In addition, graduate students from the US and India participate in the field work each year, and three US-based students are pursuing doctoral dissertation research deriving from the project.

 An important commitment of our project is the building of collaborative research relations and the training of Indian students in archaeological methods.  Between 4-8 Indian graduate students join us in the field each year, coming from universities in Kerala, Delhi, Pune, and Karnataka.  Two Indian participants, Ms. Uthara Suvrathan and Mr. Hemanth Kadambi, are currently pursuing doctoral degrees at the University of Michigan.  Mr. Kadambi will be directing an archaeological project examining the early Chalukyan empire (7-9th centuries AD) beginning in Winter 2007; Ms. Suvrathan has just completed her second year of graduate school, and hopes to pursue doctoral research on the South India Iron Age.  She will be participating in an archaeological project in Kerala in Winter 2007, as she develops her own research focus.  Sinopoli has two other doctoral students also pursuing archaeological research in South Asia.

Possible future funding needs: Archaeological research and training requires considerable resources.  Although Professor Sinopoli has external grants to support her fieldwork, her doctoral students would benefit greatly from fellowship or fieldwork support.  In addition, Dr. Shah and Dr. Srinivasan are under-employed Indian academics, and at present we are not able to compensate them adequately for their contributions to the research.  Funds of even a few thousand dollars per year would make an enormous difference in this area, and would enable them to travel to the US to meet with project directors and participate in academic conferences.  To support these and other needs related to archaeological research in South Asia, the Museum of Anthropology has recently proposed to develop a quasi-endowment fund for the support of our Asian Archaeological Research.