Early water management in South Asia: Geochronology and micromorphology of rock pools and small‐scale water catchment features in Karnataka, India

Abstract

Archaeologists and historians of South Asia have long emphasized the significance of large‐scale irrigation reservoirs to historical developments and precolonial land use. However, comparatively little attention has been directed at an extensive corpus of small‐scale water‐retention features, such as culturally modified weathering pans and rock pools. In this contribution, we provide the first geoarchaeological evidence from such features in southern India. Geochronological assessments, depositional models, and sediment and micromorphological analyses from two sites in northern Karnataka indicate that inhabitants used and modified these features in at least the first millennium BCE. Throughout later historical periods, even after the development of large‐scale, primarily elite‐sponsored, irrigation reservoirs, inhabitants continued to rely on small, dispersed water‐retention features. Our findings have implications for current debates concerning the introduction of water‐management practices in southern India, which appear to begin in association with dispersed land‐use practices rather than intensive irrigated agriculture, and also corroborate the importance of decentralized water management to historical processes more globally.

Crafting difference: artefacts and the politics of distinction at a South Indian well

“…The earliest signs of a concern for managing water date to the region’s Neolithic period (ca. 3000–1200 BCE), when the capture of seasonal run-off was likely key for cultivating rain-fed crops like millets and pulses (Gaggioli et al, 2021; Morrison, 2009). It was only during the subsequent Iron Age (ca.…”

“…It was only during the subsequent Iron Age (ca. 1200–300 BCE), characterized by the emergence of larger settlements, monumental commemorative structures (megaliths), and an expanded repertoire of crops (including paddy rice), that the region’s inhabitants began building infrastructure to store water in addition to capturing run-off, making strategic use of floodplains, and modifying rock pools to augment their capacity (Bauer, 2011; Bauer and Morrison, 2008; Gaggioli et al, 2021). Archaeological traces of a feasting event at the Iron Age settlement of Kadebakele indicate that new techniques of harvesting water, intertwined with the intensification of agrarian production, had engendered novel modes of commensality (Bauer et al, 2007; Sinopoli, 2012).…”

Critical Geoarchaeology: From Depositional Processes to the Sociopolitics of Earthen Life

“…Similar to historical ecology paradigms (sensu Balée 2006, Crumley 1994, geoarchaeologists have long called attention to landscapes and landscape histories as long-term products of human-environment interactions (see Butzer 1982, French 2003, Maher 2017 multiscalar geoarchaeology on nearly every continent have now provided pervasive documentation of how broadscale Earth surface processes have been partly influenced by human activities for millennia. These include, for instance, the effects of ancient agricultural practices on fluvial regimes and landforms, settlement and land use on pedogenic development and soil nutrition, and herding activities on hillslope processes and valley colluviation (e.g., Alizadeh et al 2004, Bauer 2014, Beach et al 2015, Casana 2008, French 2003, Gaggioli et al 2021, Marshall et al 2018, Rosen et al 2015, Shahack-Gross et al 2003, Walter & Merritts 2008, Wilkinson 2003. In short, geoarchaeological research has underscored the recursive interplay between cultural practices and landform histories, sometimes documenting devastating effects for human populations in the past (e.g., Cordova 2018, Storozum et al 2018), but also with an eye toward sustainable land use and considerations of contemporary policies in a long-term human-environment perspective (e.g., Buscardo et al 2021, Crumley et al 2015, French et al 2017, Rosen et al 2015; see also Sassaman 2012).…”