Preface Acknowledgements Introduction: Conceptual Preliminaries Section I: Historiography and Method 1. Early Social Formations: A Historiographic Review 2. The Course of Social Historiography of Kerala 3. Semiotics of Ancient Tamil Poetics: A Methodological Consideration Section II: Early Social Formations 4. Prehistoric Life in the Southern Western Ghats: Interpreting Rock-art 5. Tribes, Forest, and Social Formation in Early South India 6. Forms of Production and Forces of Change in Ancient Tamil Society 7. Early Iron Age Economy: Problems of Agrarian Expansion in Tamilakam 8.

Writing, Literacy, and Social Formations in the Tamil South 9. Towards a New Discourse: Discursive Processes in Early South India Section III: Social Transformations 10. Social Formation from the Ancient to Early Medieval 11. Historical Antecedents of the State Formation in the Deep South 12. Aspects of Great Transformation in Ancient Kerala 13. From Clan and Lineage to Hereditary Occupations and Caste 14. Spread of Writing in the Tamil South and Its Social Implications Section IV: The New Social Formation 15. Temples as Sites of the New Social Formation 16.

The Formation of Caste Society in Kerala: Historical Antecedents 17. Aspects of the Reservoir System of Irrigation in the P?n?ya Country Index.