Differentiating Settlements and the ‘Urban’ Across Early Central and Eastern Deccan

This chapter attempts to differentiate settlements that thrived during the early historic period by contextualizing their locations and analyze the factors that enable us to define some as ‘urban’ and others as key nodes in connecting across different localities of the central and eastern Deccan. It argues that the long-term habitation of local communities from the Chalcolithic and Megalithic times played a critical role in certain ecological zones of the region in defining the evolution of some of these settlements as ‘urban’. It evaluates the role of the deep spread of Buddhism in these parts as an additional factor for generating an urban environment. However, ultimately, it is suggested that the tenacious local network of linkages enabled society of the region to, one the one hand, sustain its identity and on the other, express certain features of the ‘urban’ that can be compared with other regions of the sub-continent.