Dr Hemanth Kadambi presented his paper "Pastoralism, Archaeology and Religion in early medieval Deccan: contextual understanding of Early Chalukya landscapes (c. 550-750 CE)" at the Annual Conference on South Asian Studies at Madison, Wisconsin, 17-20 October 2019. The panel organizer was Mudit Trivedi, Anthropology Graduate Student, University of Chicago.
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In this paper, I treat pastoralism as an integral component of the socio-economic lifeways of communities. Evidence from architecture, iconography and a landscape perspective to archaeological investigations clearly suggest that pastoral communities in the period of the rule of the early Chalukyas (c. 550-750 CE) had non-puranic religious affiliations. I argue from historical, art historical and archaeological evidence, that in early medieval Deccan political stability is constantly negotiated within conventionalized frames that can be comprehended from an investigation of their religious landscapes