Archaeology of Early Buddhism

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

About the Book

Archaeology of Early Buddhism will serve a very broad audience, including specialists of Buddhist monastic history and students of the material expression of ritual and religion in a complex cultural setting. Fogelin has effectively integrated modern theory on ritual, practice, and landscape with archaeological data from a key South Indian Buddhist monastery-Thatlakanda-to create a stimulating explanation of its place within a complex political, economic and social setting. It is certain to become a classic to become a classic in the field.

About the author

Lars Fogelin is assistant professor of anthropology at Albion College, Michigan. He received a BA in anthropology from Ithaca College, New York, an MA from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and a PhD in anthropology from the University of Michigan in 2003. His research and publications center on South Asian archaeology, religion, architecture, and landscape. For the last five years he has led archaeological investigations of a 2000-year-old Buddhist monastery), near the modern city of Visakhapatnam, India. He is also coeditor, with Carla M. Sinopoli , of Imperial Imaginings: The Dean C Worcester Photographic Collection of the Philippines, 1890-1913, a CD-ROM addressing American colonialism in the Philippines. Prior to his first trip to India in 1994. He participated in archeological research in Israel, the Mediterranean, Peru, and the Dutch West Indies.

Note on Transliteration

Throughout this book I phonetically transliterate Sanskrit terms rather than using the more modern system of diacritical marks that is commonly employed in Buddhist studies. This was a difficult decision. Diacritical marks undoubtedly allow for the most accurate pronunciation of Sanskrit. I chose to use phonetic transliteration for two reasons. First, archaeological sites are by convention named by their excavators. In almost all cases the names of archaeological sites are phonetically transliterated. For reasons of consistency, other Sanskrit words should be similarly transliterated. Second, I expect that many of the people reading this book will be archaeologists who work outside South Asia. While phonetic transliteration is less accurate than the use of diacriticals, it is the quickest and easiest way to approximate proper pronunciation for the non specialist. Using phonetic transliteration, Sanskrit and other terms are pronounced pretty much as an English speaker would expect. The one difference is the use of the letter to mark certain consonants as aspirated. With the exception of this does not cause any significant confusion. As for it is never pronounced as a fricative as in them, but rather as an aspirated as in stop are pronounced as they are in English.

Preface

This book is revise version of my Ph.D. dissertation, submitted in 2003 to the University of Michigan Department Of Anthropology (Fogelin 2003c). Most of the revisions have consisted of removing extraneous information unrelated to the specific goals of this book, but I have also expanded some portions of the original, particularly those dealing with the method and theory of the archaeology of religion.

The original dissertation had several appendices containing the data that I had collected during fieldwork-summaries of my site forms, field maps, ceramic drawings, and ceramic measurements. I have chosen not to reproduce them here because of space limitations. The primary data and more extensive discussions of the specific material remains can be found in the original dissertation. I am also happy to provide all of this information in a digital format to any legitimate researcher.

All of the archaeological materials collected during survey were given to the Andhra Pradesh Department of Archaeology and Museums for long-term duration. The department has stored all of the archaeological materials collected during fieldwork in its warehouse in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh. No archaeological remains were removed from India or Andhra Pradesh at any time.

Small portions of this book were adapted from recent and forthcoming publications (Fogelin 2003a, 2003b, 2004, and in press a) to suit the particular needs of this book. Most excerpts are only a few paragraphs long. In some cases, I have incorporated a few pages.

Contents