THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF GRANITIC RESIDUAL HILLS AND OTHER LANDSCAPE FEATURES OF PREHISTORIC SOUTH INDIA

Nearly level plains punctuated with isolated granitic hills characterize much of the landscape of South India. Indeed, Büdel’s (1957, 1977) pioneering views on the development of expansive erosional surfaces and inselbergs, which would became a primary concern of tropical geomorphology (cf. Bremer 1993; Thomas 1994), were largely based on observations of the Southern Deccan and Tamilnad Plains of India. In this paper I describe how Iron Age (1200-400 BC) inhabitants occupied the residual hills in a small study region of central Karnataka, South India. In doing so, I argue that ancient occupation and cultural land use altered the morphology of these features, the distribution of soils on them, and consequently impacted the processes by which they continued to develop. In addition, I will discuss how many of the landscape features commonly associated with inselbergs and residual hills (e.g., weathering pits, weathering grooves, and rock pools) were utilized, altered, and, in many instances, at least partly produced by ancient inhabitants.