ABSTRACT
Archaeology can extend the frame of reference and spatial and temporal scale of analysis for urban ecology scholars and planners addressing the wide range of issues and challenges presently associated with cities and urban systems. In urban ecology, food is often conceptualized as a provisioning ‘ecosystem service’, defined as the benefits an ecosystem affords human well-being, directly and indirectly. A resurgence of urbanism in the subcontinent began in the early first millennium BCE with the establishment of dozens of cities along major watercourses including the Ganges, Narmada, Tapti, Brahmaputra, and Krishna Rivers. Southeast Asia’s earliest urban centers arose in the river valleys and coasts early in the first millennium CE, nearly 2500 years after the earliest documented evidence for plant and animal domestication. Urban ecology provides a lens for studying both resilience and vulnerability in tropical agrarian systems like the premodern Lower Mekong Basin.
