CONTENTS: Prelude: Sources and Approaches, Introduction, Part l: RETRIEVING PREHISTORY AND PROTOHISTORY FROM ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOURCES: 1. Hunting-Gathering and Early Food-Producing Sites, 2. Settlement Patterns, Exchange and Interaction between Communities: Harappan Urbanism, c.2500-1500 BCE, 3. Tracing the Indo-Europeans and Indo-Iranians beyond South Asia: Late Neolithic, Chalcolithic and Early Iron Phases in South Asia, c.1900-600BCE, Part II: EARLY HISTORIC SOURCES: TEXTS AND CONTEXTS: 4. Early Literary Traditions, c.1900-600 BCE, 5. Emergent Histories, Entangled Ideas, c.600-400 BCE, Part III: CREATING ARCHIVES: EPIGRAPHS, COINS, ART AND TREATISES: 6. Polycentric Networks and Devanamapiya Piyadassi's Epigraphic Archive, c.400-200 BCE, 7. Convergence, Contestation and Consolidation: Coins, Artefacts and the Itihasa-Kavya-Sastra Literary Traditions, 200 BCE to the Beginning of the Common Era, Appendix: Maps, Bibliography, Index.