Valuing Veins: Clay and Gold in the Medieval Deccan

This project charts the trajectories of two materials extracted from the earth and crafted into products that circulated in Deccani social worlds during the medieval period (11th–16th centuries): clay and gold. Drawing on the archeological record, epigraphy, literary works, and technical treatises, it focuses on the ways in which the earth was conceptualized as a repository of resources for wealth and sustenance, and how value was generated through the skillful transformation of its products. Situated at Maski, a multi-period archeological site where traces of agropastoral and craft production activities occur in close proximity to outcropping quartz veins from which gold was extracted, this project tracks the shifting boundaries between "quotidian" and "prestigious" materials in the late precolonial Deccan by attending to the workings of place-specific knowledge, labor and craftsmanship, as well as the dynamics of circulation, use, and reuse with regard to two ostensibly different products of the earth.