This compilation of original research articles highlight the important cross-regional, cross-chronological, and comparative approaches to political and economic landscapes in ancient South Asia and its neighbors. Focusing on the Indus Valley period and Iron Age India, this volume incorporates new research in South Asia within the broader universe of archaeological scholarship. Contributions focus on four major themes: reinterpreting material culture; identifying domains and regional boundaries; articulating complexity; and modeling interregional interaction. These studies develop theoretical models that may be applicable researchers studying cultural complexity elsewhere in the world.

In recent years, postcolonial theories have emerged as one of the significant paradigms of contemporary academia, affecting disciplines throughout the humanities and social sciences. These theories address the complex processes if colonialism on culture and society with repect to both the colonizers and the colonized to help us understand the colonial experience in its entirety. The contributors to Archaeology and the Postcolonial Critique present critical syntheses of archaeological and postcolonial studies by examining both Old and New World case studies, and they ask what the ultimate effect of postcolonial theorizing will be on the practice of archaeology in the twenty-first century.

This compilation of original research articles highlight the important cross-regional, cross-chronological, and comparative approaches to political and economic landscapes in ancient South Asia and its neighbors. Focusing on the Indus Valley period and Iron Age India, this volume incorporates new research in South Asia within the broader universe of archaeological scholarship. Contributions focus on four major themes: reinterpreting material culture; identifying domains and regional boundaries; articulating complexity; and modeling interregional interaction. These studies develop theoretical models that may be applicable researchers studying cultural complexity elsewhere in the world.