The Iron Age Culture and Settlement in South India

The Iron Age culture in South India was for a long time known only through so called megalithic monuments. From the earliest times people believed that monuments contained gold or some enigmatic ash which could convert any metal into gold. As a result, the monuments repeatedly fell victim to vandalism or served as a source of building material. Now it is acknowledged that the megaliths form an integral part of the Iron Age culture and the study of the period is no longer focused exclusively on them. The distribution, chronology, material culture, funerary customs, including the typology of megaliths, and socio-economic issues can be found in the present book. The settlements of Iron Age people was given much attention here, with special reference to the Dharmapuri region (Tamil Nadu). Several burial-cum-habitation sites were described in detail in order to seek out for some mutual relations: topographical, chronological and functional, between the burial and the settlement within a broad ecological context of the region.