Dilip Kumar Chakrabarti (born 27 April 1941) is an Indian archaeologist, Professor Emeritus of South Asian Archaeology at

Cambridge University , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

, and a Senior Fellow at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge University. He is known for his studies on the early use of

iron Iron () is a chemical element with symbol Fe (from la, ferrum) and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 of the periodic table. It is, by mass, the most common element on Earth, right in ...

in India and the archaeology of Eastern India.

Career

Dilip K Chakrabarti is the first person to hold professorship in the field of ancient Indian history at Cambridge University. He started his career as a lecturer of Archaeology at

Calcutta University The University of Calcutta (informally known as Calcutta University; CU) is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate State university (India), state university in India, located in Kolkata, West Bengal, India. Considered ...

from 1965 to 1977. He was a reader of Archaeology at

Delhi University Delhi University (DU), formally the University of Delhi, is a collegiate central university located in New Delhi, India. It was founded in 1922 by an Act of the Central Legislative Assembly and is recognized as an Institute of Eminence (IoE) ...

from 1977 to 1990 and also held a tenured appointment at Visva Bharati University from 1980 to 1981. He moved to a teaching post in South Asian archaeology at

in 1990 and was promoted to professor prior to his retirement in 2008. He has also held visiting fellowships, scholarships, teaching appointments and received grants in Cambridge, Edinburgh, Tehran, New York, Paris, Jahangir Nagar (Bangladesh) and Armidale (Australia). He has archaeologically surveyed the Kangra valley, the whole of the Chhotanagpur plateau, the whole of the Ganga-Yamuna plain and Haryana-Panjab between 1980 and 2008. During this period he also worked out in the field the archaeology of the routes which linked the Ganga plain with the Deccan and the ancient routes of the Deccan and the southern Peninsula. After his retirement in 2008 he completed a spell of field-studies in Rajasthan. In 1963-79 he participated in archaeological field-projects in India and Iran. On these field-topics and other problems of Indian archaeology, he has authored (co-authored in two cases) 29 books (one in press) and edited/co-edited about a dozen more. He is presently Distinguished Fellow at the Delhi-based think tank, Vivekananda International Foundation, where he is also the Editor of the eleven-volume VIF serie
''History of Ancient India''
Dr. Dilip Chakrabarti has strived to bring academic rigor into the Indian history research. Chakrabarti argues 'that South Asian archaeology need not mimic the developments in the Euro-American World, but rather it should be attentive to its own needs'. Dr. Dilip Chakrabarti also served on the Humanities jury for the

Infosys Prize The Infosys Prize is an annual award given to scientists, researchers, engineers and social scientists of Indian origin (not necessarily born in India) by the Infosys Science Foundation and ranks among the highest monetary awards in India to r ...

in 2013.

Publications

* (co-authored with S J Hasan) ''The Antiquities of Kangra'' (1984) Delhi:

Munshiram Manoharlal Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd. (MRML) is a leading publishing house located in New Delhi, India. Established in 1952 by Manohar Lal Jain, it is one of the oldest publishing houses in India. About MRML publishes books on social sc ...

Publishers Private Limited *''Ancient Bangladesh: A Study of the Archaeological Sources'' (1992) Delhi:

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print book ...

*''The Early Use of Iron in India'' (1992) Delhi: Oxford University Press *''Archaeology of Eastern India:

Chhotanagpur Plateau The Chota Nagpur Plateau is a plateau in eastern India, which covers much of Jharkhand state as well as adjacent parts of Chhattisgarh, Odisha, West Bengal and Bihar. The Indo-Gangetic plain lies to the north and east of the plateau, and the bas ...

and West Bengal'' (1993) Delhi:

Publishers Private Limited. *''Archaeology of coastal

West Bengal West Bengal (, Bengali: ''Poshchim Bongo'', , abbr. WB) is a state in the eastern portion of India. It is situated along the Bay of Bengal, along with a population of over 91 million inhabitants within an area of . West Bengal is the fou ...

Twenty-four Parganas 24 Parganas district (''cabbiś pargaṇā jēlā'') is a former district of the Indian state of West Bengal. The district was split into two districts — North 24 Parganas district and South 24 Parganas district, with effect from 1 March 1 ...

and Midnapur districts'' (1994) South Asian Studies,10:pp. 135–160 *''A note on the use of metals in ancient Bengal, Pratnasamiksha'' (1994) Bulletin of the Directorate of Archaeology and Museums, Government of West Bengal, 2 & 3:pp. 155–158 *''The Archaeology of Ancient Indian Cities'' (1995) Delhi: Oxford University Press. *''Post-Mauryan states of mainland south Asia'' (1995) In: F. Raymond Allchin (ed.), ''The Archaeology of Early Historic South Asia'', pp. 274–326. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press *''Preliminary observations on the distribution of sites in the south Bihar plain'' (1995) South Asian Studies, 11:pp. 129–147 *''Buddhist sites across south Asia as influenced by political and economic forces'' (1995) World Archaeology,27(2):pp. 185–202. * (co-authored with

Nayanjot Lahiri Nayanjot Lahiri is a historian and archaeologist of ancient India and a professor of history at Ashoka University. She was previously on the faculty of the department of history at the University of Delhi. She is the winner of the 2013 Infosys P ...

) ''Copper and its Alloys in Ancient India'' (1996) Delhi:

Publishers Private Limited *''From Purnea to Champaran: The distribution of sites in the north Bihar plains'' (1996) South Asian Studies, 12:pp. 147–158 *''Colonial Indology: Sociopolitics of the Ancient Indian Past'' (1997) Delhi:

Publishers Private Limited *''The Issues in East Indian Archaeology'' (1998) Delhi:

Publishers Private Limited *''India: An Archaeological History. Palaeolithic Beginnings to Early Historic Foundations'' (1999) Delhi: Oxford University Press *''Archaeological Geography of the Ganga Plain. The Lower and the Middle Ganga'' (2001) Delhi: Permanent Black * The archaeology of Hinduism, in Timothy Insoll (ed.) ''Archaeology and World Religion'' (2001) London & NY: Routledge *''A History of Indian Archaeology: From the Beginning to 1947'' (1988, 2001) Delhi:

Publishers Private Ltd. *''The Archaeology of European Expansion in India, Gujarat, c. 16th–18th Centuries'' (2003) Delhi: Aryan Books International *''Archaeology in the Third World: A History of Indian Archaeology since 1947'' (2003) Delhi: D. K. Printworld Private Limited *''A Sourcebook of Indian Archaeology. Volume 3. Prehistoric Roots of Religious Beliefs, Human Remains, The First Steps in Historical Archaeology: Sculpture, Architecture, Coins and Inscriptions'' (ed. with F. Raymond Allchin) (2003) Delhi:

Publishers Private Ltd. *''Indus Civilization Sites in India: New Discoveries'' (ed.) (2004) Mumbai: Marg Publications *''The Archaeology of the Deccan Routes: The Ancient Routes from the Ganga Plain to the Deccan'' (2005) New Delhi:

Publishers Private Limited *''The Oxford Companion to Indian Archaeology: The Archaeological Foundations of Ancient India, Stone Age to AD 13th Century'' (2006) Delhi:

*''Archaeological Geography of the Ganga Plain: The Upper Ganga (Oudh, Rohilkhand, and the Doab)'' (2008) New Delhi:

Publishers Private Limited *''The Battle for Ancient India: An Essay in the Sociopolitics of Indian Archaeology'' (2008) Delhi: Aryan Books International *''The Geopolitical Orbits of Ancient India'' (2010) Delhi:

*''The Ancient Routes of the Deccan and the Southern Peninsula'' (2010) Delhi: Aryan Books International *''Royal Messages by the Wayside: Historical Geography of the Asokan Edicts'' (2011) Delhi: Aryan Books International *''Fifty Years of Indian Archaeology (1960-2010): Journey of a Foot Soldier'' (2012) Delhi: Aryan Books International * (co-edited with Makkhan Lal) ''History of Ancient India I: Prehistoric Roots'' (2013) Delhi:

Vivekananda International Foundation The Vivekananda International Foundation (VIF) is an Indian public policy think-tank. It is considered to be aligned to right-of-centre in its policies. Origins and history The Vivekananda International Foundation describes itself as an " ...

& Aryan Books International * (co-edited with Makkhan Lal) ''History of Ancient India II: Protohistoric Foundations'' (2013) Delhi:

& Aryan Books International * (co-edited with Makkhan Lal) ''History of Ancient India III: The Texts, Political History and Administration, till c. 200 BC'' (2013) Delhi:

& Aryan Books International * (co-edited with Makkhan Lal) ''History of Ancient India IV: Political History and Administration (c. 200 BC-AD 750)'' (2013) Delhi:

& Aryan Books International * (co-edited with Makkhan Lal) ''History of Ancient India V: Political History and Administration (c. AD 750-1300)'' (2013) Delhi:

& Aryan Books International *''Nation First: Essays in the Politics of Ancient Indian Studies (Including an Analysis of the CAG Report on the Archaeological Survey of India)'' (2014) Delhi: Aryan Books International *''History of Ancient India VI: Social, Political and Judicial Ideas, Institutions and Practices'' (2018) Delhi:

& Aryan Books International *''History of Ancient India VII: Economy: Agriculture, Crafts and Trade'' (2018) Delhi:

& Aryan Books International *''The Borderlands and Boundaries of the Indian Subcontinent: Baluchistan to the Patkai Range and Arakan Yoma'' (2018) Delhi: Aryan Books International

References

External links

Column
in the

Indian Express ''The Indian Express'' is an English-language Indian daily newspaper founded in 1932. It is published in Mumbai by the Indian Express Group. In 1999, eight years after the group's founder Ramnath Goenka's death in 1991, the group was split be ...

Introducing the Series ''History of Ancient India''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Chakrabarti, Dilip Kumar 20th-century Indian archaeologists 1941 births Living people University of Calcutta alumni University of Calcutta faculty Delhi University faculty Academics of the University of Cambridge Archaeologists of South Asia Scholars from Kolkata