The road to Golconda: European travelers' routes, political organization and archaeology in the Golconda Kingdom (1518--1687)

This dissertation examines the itineraries of two European travelers to the Golconda kingdom in the seventeenth century, Jean Thevenot and Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, to analyze how later historians have used their accounts and the implications for understanding the Golconda kingdom's political organization. The study of road networks in the Golconda kingdom has been limited, despite their importance to any large political system. For my research, I combined perspectives from archaeology, history, and architectural history to critically re-examine past use of European accounts by historians and consider new ways to understand the road networks of the Golconda kingdom. I determined the modern locations of the places Thevenot and Tavernier visited on several routes, visited these and related sites, and documented standing architecture and other cultural features, particularly those built in the style associated with the kingdom's capital. Combining this information with previous scholarship, I concluded that evidence for centralized elite investment in roads and facilities for travelers was irregular in its distribution and form. There was no sign of an extensive building program that could be linked to a particular ruler suggesting imperial expansion or increased centralization. The initial portion of the road leading from the capital in Golconda and Hyderabad toward the port of Masulipatnam showed greater evidence of such architectural features, most of which can be dated to the middle phase of the kingdom (late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries). This same area also contained an absence of evidence for previous structures and patronage by earlier kingdoms, suggesting its development began with the Golconda kingdom. But rather than a centralized, imperial expansion, the irregular distribution of structures along the roads more likely reflected patronage by court elites acting individually on lands in their possession. Such actions were a part of a 'culture of building' that peaked during the middle phase of the kingdom. These structures deserve additional study and protection, and should be included in future analyses of the kingdom in addition to the better-known structures cited in existing published works on the Golconda kingdom.