ABSTRACT
The southwestern part of Bangladesh, currently covering the greater Khulna-Jashore Districts, is characterised by distinct ecological and landscape contexts. Recent archaeological surveying and excavations have brought to fore several archaeological places which are immensely important to rethink and reinterpret the assumption that this deltaic part became habitable and suitable for extensive human activity only during the ‘medieval’ period, during or after the fifteenth century CE. The dominant historical discourses are founded upon ‘medieval’ monuments and monumental remains of Bagerhat and Barobazar, monumental remains of Hindu temples from early modern period and decontextualised artefacts like coins, and inscriptions. In this chapter, recently discovered archaeological places and evidence push the dates of the extensive human occupation, at least, to ‘early medieval’ period (c. ninth to tenth centuries CE), on the one hand. On the other hand, excavations on early medieval structural places and medieval habitational places show that the human activities in this zone were entangled to the changing landscape, waterscape, and forest-scape. Human activities, simultaneously, attempted to manage and transform the variables in their own and unique ways. It has been found that the spatial patterns of archaeological places are not limited to specific zones with presumed ‘environmental advantage suitability, or stability’.
