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In this paper we focus on both the preconditions for and early transitions to intensive agriculture in the South Indian Iron Age. The South Indian Iron Age spans the transition between the more mobile agro-pastoral strategies of the Southern Neolithic and the intensive irrigated agriculture that supported Early Historic and later towns. Despite its importance, however, we know relatively less about strategies of production and their social and environmental consequences during this transitional era than we do for periods before and after.

Presented here are preliminary results of botanical analyses from an Iron Age midden context at Kadebakele, in the dry interior of northern Karnataka, India. Kadebakele is a deeply-stratified site with deposits beginning in the Southern Neolithic and extending to the 16th c. CE (Figure 1, and see Sinopoli, et al. 2008). Although excavations to date have revealed material from all time …