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Human burials have been recovered from a wide variety of intra- and extramural settlement contexts at Neolithic period sites (3000-1200 BC) in southern India, yet formal cemeteries remain virtually unknown from this period. Research at MARP-79 in the Raichur District of the south Indian state of Karnataka, near the type-site of Maski, documents a large Neolithic cemetery, now with the largest number of radiometrically dated burials of any archaeological site in southern India. The cemetery demonstrates considerable, previously undocumented variation in mortuary ritual, involving new materials, technologies and burial practices, which challenge culture-historical models, pointing instead towards long-term incremental developments that alter how we understand the emergence of Neolithic social differences. Keywords: South Asia, Neolithic, mortuary archaeology, social organisation, funerary ritual, radiocarbon dating, Introduction For more than 1000 years, beginning in the mid third millennium BC, agro-pastoral communities buried and memorialised their dead in a sprawling cemetery located in the shadow of a [...]

This paper considers the intersections of memorialization practices and politics throughout a period of emergent social differentiation during the Neolithic and Iron Age periods in the Deccan region of southern India. Rather than focus on how mortuary architecture and grave assemblages might correlate with the status, rank, or class of the deceased individuals—as has often been suggested—we place emphasis on how mortuary practices and the production of megalithic places contributed to the establishment and maintenance of social collectives among living communities. More specifically, we identify at least two modes of political practice associated with megalithic production in prehistoric South India: one related to the constitution of collectives of labor and shared consumption activities involved in the process of making monuments; and a second related to the material legacy of monuments in constituting cultural and historical places of social affiliation. In making these arguments about the social significance of megalithic places, we also critically consider new materialist and posthumanist theoretical frameworks in archaeology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Provides information about the South Asian archaeology. Analysis of various archaeological remains; Details on the social and economic practices of the Indians; Maintenance of social identities.