The essays in this volume are an attempt to tease out from the scant archaeo-logical (and to some extent historical) sources available, some information on certain aspects of rural societies in the past: mobility, subsistence from animal herding, symbiosis between crop production and animal rearing, situating hunters and gatherers, and the importance of forest as integral to rural life rather than the dichotomous ???other??? of the field or village. There is also an attempt to bring out the ways in which tribal society, continuously misrepresented in academia today, laid the foundations of many aspects of Indian civilization in the remote past. About The Author: Shereen Ratnagar gave up her Professorship in Archaeology at the JNU when it ceased to be fun and has since been researching and teaching in various places. Her interests include the bronze age, trade, urbanism, pastoralism, and, recently, the social dimensions of early technology. She lives in Mumbai. Table of Contents 1. Hunter-Gatherer and Early Agriculturist: Archaeological Evidence for Contact 2. Our Tribal Past 3. A Chalcolithic Village in a Famine Belt 4. Pastoralism as an Issue in Historical Research