Akinori UESUGI

　I have so far been conducting research in South Asia, especially in India and Pakistan, in order to better understand how the ‘South Asian world’ made its shape in history. The time range covers a long term between 4000 BCE and 1000 CE that includes Chalcolithic, Bronze, Iron Ages, Early Historic and Early Medieval periods. The Indus Valley Civilization is one of my interests. In addition, I have been engaged in archaeological projects in different regions in the Middle East such as Bahrain and Turkey, in which I have focused on the history of interregional interactions between South Asia and these regions and the comarative study on the ancient urbanisation and trades in these regions.

With this background of my research, I shall focus on the interregional interactions between the Arabian Peninsula, in which pastoralist’s society dominated, and the surrounding regions that include different types of society such as sedentary community, maritime community and urban society, in this project. The Arabian Peninsula includes different types of landscapes consisting of arid deserts, coasts and hilly areas, and societies that were based not only on husbandary, but also on agriculture and fishery. The long-stretching coastal areas of the peninsula facilitated developments of maritime transportation and trades, which connected the peninsula with South Asia, the Iranian Plateau and the alluvial plains of Mesopotamia. Such interregional connections brought developments of complex and diverse societies to the peninsula. My research shall focus on such dynamic interregional interactions and developments of diverse range of regional societies.

Selected publications
・Akinori Uesugi (ed.) 2018. Current Research on Indus Archaeology. Research Group for South Asian Archaeology, Archaeological Research Institute, Kansai University, Osaka.
・Akinori Uesugi (ed.) 2018. Iron Age in South Asia. Research Group for South Asian Archaeology, Archaeological Research Institute, Kansai University, Osaka.
・Akinori Uesugi 2018. Ceramics and Terracotta Figurines from Balochistan of the Katolec Collection. Katolec, Tokyo.
・Akinori Uesugi, Manmohan Kumar and V. Dangi 2018. "Indus Stone Beads in the Ghaggar Plain with a Focus on the Evidence from Farmana and Mitathal", in D. Frenez, G.M. Jamison, R.W. Law, M. Vidale and R.H. Meadow eds. Walking with the Unicorn: Social Organization and Material Culture in Ancient South Asia, Jonathan Mark Kenoyer Felicitation Volume. Archaeopress, Oxford. pp. 568-591.