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The Sanganakallu-Kapgallu Hill Complex of Southern India: Recent Archeological and Multidisciplinary Research

By Dr. Ravi Korisettar, Professor of History and Archaeology at Karnatak University in Dharwad, India

Monday, April 22, 2013
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
10383 Bunche Hall

Professor Ravi Korisettar will discuss recent multidisciplinary investigations of the Sanganakallu-Kapgallu hill complex in southern India. The site is perhaps the most extensive Neolithic settlement in southern India, with a history dating back at least 2,000 years. Spread over 1,000 acres, five granite hills constitute the complex. Together, they form a horseshoe-shaped plateau that gave hilltop occupants a clear view of one another’s villages. Contrary to earlier ideas that Neolithic culture in southern India was largely pastoral, recent research indicates that agricultural production gave rise to an early political economy at the site and that the Hiregudda hill served as a major ritual center for its villages. Prof. Korisettar will address in particular how this research has given us a better understanding of the origins and development of agricultural economies and ritual practices in southern India during the period 2000–1000 B.C.

Biography: Ravi Korisettar is currently Professor of History and Archaeology at Karnatak University, Dharwad, Karnataka, India. He obtained his post-graduated and Ph.D. degrees from Deccan College in Pune. He joined the Department of History and Archaeology at Karnatak University in 1989, and ever since he has been collaborating with institutions in India and abroad, particularly with Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, the universities of Cambridge and Oxford and Instititute of Archaeology, UCL-London. With Dr. M.D. Petraglia he has conducted a series of investigations into the Palaeolithic and Neolithic cultures of southern India and has been excavating a group of Later Pleistocene open air, rockshelter and cave sites at Jwalapuram in Kurnool District of Andhra Pradesh. With Dr. D.Q. Fuller and Nicole Boivin he has conducted a series of investigations into the origins of agricultural economies in south India and excavated a large Neolithic site at Sanganakallu in Karnataka.