M.K. Dhavalikar. Environment and culture: a historical perspective.

M.K. Dhavalikar. Environment and culture: a historical perspective. M.K. DHAVALIKAR. Environment and culture: a historical perspective.x+324 pages, 44 figures, 7 tables. 2002. Pune: Bhandarkar OrientalResearch Institute The Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, abbreviated BORI, is located in Pune. India. It was founded in 1917 to commemorate the activities of Ramakrishna Gopal Bhandarkar (1837-1925), regarded as the founder of Orientalism ( = Indology?) in India. . IRFAN HABIB Irfan Habib (1931- ) is an Indian historian, a former Chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research and a Padma Bhushan awardee.BiographyHabib is the son of Mohammad Habib, a noted historian and freedom fighter. . The Indus civilization Indus civilization(c. 2500–c. 1700 BC) Earliest known urban culture of the Indian subcontinent and the most extensive of the world's three earliest civilizations. (A People's History ofIndia Vol. 2). x+111 pages, 48 figures, 5 tables. 2002. New Delhi:Tulika; 81-85229-66-X hardback Rs225. Prof. DHAVALIKAR has undertaken the same sort of chronologicalsurvey of cultural ecology as REDMAN ('Cultural and physicalenvironment', above), accounting for the development 'Fromforaging to farming', the rise and decline of towns in the Induscivilisation, the 'Age of empires', followed by the'Second deurbanization', and up to the 'Mediaevalmisery'. Here, instability is blamed on drought. See also the review of Acheulian culture, pp. 627-9, below. * Prof. HABIB'S admirable little book illustrates well themovement in India to greet spreading literacy and broadening interestwith learned but accessible coverage of archaeology. It is clearlywritten, effectively organised, better illustrated than most Indianproductions, and very nicely designed. Readers learn a good deal aboutthe general nature of archaeological research into the bargain. Awkwardlooking footnotes etc. have been relegated to a helpful and amplebibliography (albeit the references will remain very difficult for mostIndian readers to trace).