ABSTRACT
The shifting frontiers of early medieval Indian history in the last thirty years and more have been the result of new sets of questions that have been made to bear on the inscriptional sources. The emerging alternative narrative of dynamic and mobile societies in the making through the regions, as against their earlier portrayal within the Indian feudalism paradigm, attracts attention. There has been a symmetrical nuanced treatment of the available data by archaeologists and numismatists in the meantime, especially in the last two decades, which unequivocally affirms the overall emergent picture rendered by the historians for the period. The recalibrated dates for the defining potteries of the times (RPW, Torpedo ware, and TGW) have significant implications for our understanding of the unfolding of the ‘third urbanization’ and the earlier cherished idea of the ‘urban revolution’ under the Delhi Sultanate. The article while appreciating the archaeological correlation of land grants also urges the study of settlement complexes in preference to mound-specific works largely owing to the fact that settlements were mobile and changing, and in several instances even spread beyond the fortifications/moats.
