Dilip Chakrabarti

Educated in Kolkata, Prof. Chakrabarti has taught in various universities for forty-three years (1965-2008), the last eighteen years in Cambridge University where he is currently an emeritus professor in the Department of Archaeology. He has done research on the following themes of Indian archaeology : the archaeology of ancient Indian cities ; history of Indian archaeology from the beginning to the present; the use of iron and copper in ancient India; the external trade of the Indus civilization ; the geo-political orbits of ancient Indian dynasties; historical geography of the Asokan edicts ; socio-politics of the ancient Indian past ; theoretical dimensions of Indian archaeology ; and the archaeological geography of a vast stretch of land -- the Ganga plain from the Sagar island to the Uttarakhand hills; Kangra valley; Chhotanagpur plateau; Bangladesh; Haryana and Indian Punjab. He has also carried out field-studies of the ancient routes which led from the Ganga-Yamuna plain to the Deccan, and the ancient routes between the Konkan coast and the Godavari delta on the one hand and between western Maharashtra and Kanya Kumari on the other. Currently, he is engaged in working out the ancient routes which went from the Delhi-Mathura area to Rajasthan, Malwa and Gujarat. He has so far authored 27 books (one in press) and more than 200 articles, notes and reviews. He has also edited/co-edited 5 volumes. He has been doing regular archaeological field-work in different parts of India since the early 1960s.