Contents

Foreword to the Series vii

Preface χ
List of contributors xxi

I. Theoretical perspectives
George Erdosy
1. Language, material culture and ethnicity: Theoretical perspec-
tives 1
Kenneth A. R. Kennedy
2. Have Aryans been identified in the prehistoric skeletal record
from South Asia? Biological anthropology and concepts of an-
cient races 32

Madhav M. Deshpande
3. Vedic Aryans, non-Vedic Aryans, and non-Aryans: Judging the
linguistic evidence of the Veda 67
Michael Witzel
4. Early Indian history: Linguistic and textual paramétrés 85
Jim G. Shaffer and Diane A. Lichtenstein
5. The concepts of "cultural tradition" and "palaeoethnicity" in
South Asian archaeology 126
P. Oktor Skjaerv0
6. The Avesta as source for the early history of the Iranians . . . . 155
Arvind Sharma
7. The Aryan question: Some general considerations 177

II Historical perspectives
Fredrik T. Hiebert
8. South Asia from a Central Asian perspective 192
Walter A. Fairservis Jr.
9. Central Asia and the Rgveda: The archaeological evidence . . . 206
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Jonathan M. Kenoyer
10. Interaction systems, specialised crafts and culture change: The
Indus Valley Tradition and the Indo-Gangetic Tradition in
South Asia 213
Franklin C. Southworth
11. Reconstructing social context from language: Indo-Aryan and
Dravidian prehistory 258
Kenneth R. Norman
12. Dialect variation in Old and Middle Indo-Aryan 278
Richard Salomon
13. On drawing socio-linguistic distinctions in Old Indo-Aryan: The
question of Ksatriya Sanskrit and related problems 293
Michael Witzel
14. Rgvedic history: poets, chieftains and polities 307
Asko Parpóla
15. The problem of the Aryans and the Soma: Textual-linguistic and
archaeological evidence 353
Harri Nyberg
16. The problem of the Aryans and the Soma: The botanical
evidence 382

Author Index 407

General Index 410