University of Oxford

Graduate Student, Archaeology

DPhil Student

St. Hugh's

Thesis Title: The Palaeolithic Occupation of the Thar Desert: Assessing Models for the Dispersal of Homo Sapiens into South Asia

About

In 2009, I began DPhil research in the Research Laboratory for Archaeology and History of Art, School of Archaeology, University of Oxford, funded by St Hugh’s College, entitled “The Palaeolithic Occupation of the Thar Desert: Assessing Models for the Dispersal of Homo sapiens into South Asia”. The aims of my DPhil thesis are to: 1) synthesise Palaeolithic and palaeoenvironmental records for the Thar Desert; 2) test hypotheses drawn from this synthesis through survey and excavation; and 3) to assess models for the dispersals of modern humans into South Asia. Fieldwork in the Thar Desert (Rajasthan, India), undertaken with support from a Emslie Horniman Scholarship (Royal Anthropological Institute), is targeted to provide a new level of detail on Palaeolithic archaeology from the region by undertaking technological analysis of lithic assemblages, comparable with the most recent research in South Asia and beyond. By integrating patterns of cultural variability within a robust chronological framework and schema of palaeoenvironmental change, this research will throw light upon evidence for human migrations during the Late Pleistocene through a major biogeographic boundary.

I have been studying South Asian archaeology for 9 years, and have undertaken a range of fieldwork in the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. This research has focused primarily upon Late Pleistocene-Holocene hunter-gatherers, including excavation at a number of rock shelter and open air sites and recording rock art.  I designed and conducted a systematic survey in Kurnool District, Andhra Pradesh, as part of my MPhil (University of Cambridge), leading to the identification of 50 new rock art sites and evidence for a unique variation of the regions megalithic burial tradition. More recently, I have been undertaking GIS analysis of Total Station survey data and a range of proxy evidence to present a local, landscape approach to palaeoenvironmental reconstruction.

In addition to my Indian research, I have worked within British commercial archaeology for over three and a half years, principally for the Cambridge Archaeological Unit. This has provided me with a broad variety of experience in excavation, ranging from richly stratified urban deposits from medieval Cambridge, to expansive Fenland pre-historic landscapes.