Transforming the agricultural landscape: Intensification of production at Vijayanagara, India

Although the causes and consequences of agricultural intensification have often been debated, comparatively less attention has been focussed on the process of intensification itself. I argue that it is not possible to evaluate the debate over the causes of intensification until we develop a more secure understanding of the course or courses of change. The process of agricultural intensification is complex and variable, consisting of multiple strategies of production which may be flexibly employed by producers to meet a range of demands, constraints, and opportunities.;The Vijayanagara Metropolitan Survey is a program of systematic surface survey of the area surrounding the city of Vijayanagara. Overall, survey data indicate two major periods of settlement expansion, as well as a great deal of diversity, both in forms and scales of production, in agricultural facilities.;Indigenous documents include stone and copper-plate inscriptions referring to grants of land or other wealth, the construction of agricultural facilities, and the reclamation of land. Analysis of a database of Vijayanagara-period inscriptions reveals temporal and spatial patterns of grants and transactions related to agriculture.;Pollen and microscopic charcoal analyses from a stratified sediment core of a Vijayanagara-period reservoir, reveals distinct patterns of vegetation change through time, and a landscape which had undergone significant modification by the beginning of the Vijayanagara period.;In this study, I examine the structure of land use and the course of change in agricultural production in and around the city of Vijayanagara, the capital of an empire controlling much of southern India between circa AD 1350 and 1650. Vijayanagara supported a large urban population through a diverse and intensive agricultural landscape. Three independent bodies of information are employed in the study of Vijayanagara agriculture: archaeolgoical survey, quantitative and qualitative analysis of historical documents, and analysis of pollen and microscopic charcoal.;Taken together, these three lines of evidence provide a glimpse of the nature of the Vijayanagara agricultural landscape and its change through time, indicating that the path of intensification was complex, reflecting the range of factors involved in its initiation.