Shaw, Julia; (2025) Water-Access, Urbanism and Monastic Placemaking: Upland-lowland Socio-ecologies and Governmentalities in Early-historic South Asia. In: Keller, Sara, (ed.) Accessing Water in The South Asian City. Primus Publisher: New Delhi.

Text Shaw_Water Access Urbanism and Monastic Placemaking.pdf - Published Version Access restricted to UCL open access staff Download (4MB)

Abstract

In this chapter, I explore the historiography of water administration and access in early India, focusing on archaeological case studies that highlight state-level as well as community and religion-based ‘governmentalities’, and consider the relevance of such material for discourse that has traditionally stressed the importance of centrally administered water resources for the emergence and sustenance of early-historic urbanism. Case studies include the Sudarśana reservoir in Junagadh, Gujarat, mentioned in the associated Girnar Rock inscriptions, and a network of contemporary reservoirs documented during the Sanchi Survey Project (SSP), and comparative material from other parts of the Indian subcontinent and Sri Lanka.1 The SSP multi-type landscape archaeology dataset includes a network of reservoirs that shed light on Buddhist monastic engagements with food production, land and water use in lowland agricultural zones, as well as on attitudes towards, and engagement with, upland forested areas. Discussion includes a critical appraisal of discourse on Buddhism and ecology including social constructions of the forest, its inhabitants, deities and economic produce, and how debates and sources within Indology and art history relate to the archaeological perspective which challenges the traditional dislocation between assumed-to-be ‘peripheral’ upland forested zones and their ‘productive’ lowland agricultural counterparts.

Download activity - last month

Export as JSONXMLCSV

Download activity - last 12 months

Export as XMLCSVJSON

Downloads by country - last 12 months

Export as XMLCSVJSON

Archive Staff Only

View Item