Frontmatter -- Foreword to the Series -- Preface -- Contents -- List of contributors -- I. Theoretical perspectives -- 1. Language, material culture and ethnicity: Theoretical perspectives / Erdosy, George -- 2. Have Aryans been identified in the prehistoric skeletal record from South Asia? Biological anthropology and concepts of ancient races / Kennedy, Kenneth A. R. -- 3. Vedic Aryans, non-Vedic Aryans, and non-Aryans: Judging the linguistic evidence of the Veda / Deshpande, Madhav M. -- 4. Early Indian history: Linguistic and textual parametres / Witzel, Michael -- 5. The concepts of "cultural traditon" and "palaeoethnicity" in South Asian archaeology / Shaffer, Jim G. / Lichtenstein, Diane A. -- 6. The Avesta as source for the early history of the Iranians / Skjaervø, P. Oktor -- 7. The Aryan question: Some general considerations / Sharma, Arvind -- II Historical perspectives -- 8. South Asia from a Central Asian perspective / Hiebert, Fredrik T. -- 9. Central Asia and the Rgveda: The archaeological evidence / Fairservis, Walter A. -- 10. Interaction systems, specialised crafts and culture change: The Indus Valley Tradition and the Indo-Gangetic Tradition in South Asia / Kenoyer, Jonathan Mark -- 11. Reconstructing social context from language: Indo-Aryan and Dravidian prehistory / Southworth, Franklin C. -- 12. Dialect variation in Old and Middle Indo-Aryan / Norman, K.R. -- 13. On drawing socio-linguistic distinctions in Old Indo-Aryan: The question of Ksatriya Sanskrit and related problems / Salomon, Richard -- 14. gvedic history: poets, chieftains and polities / Witzel, Michael -- 15. The problem of the Aryans and the Soma: Textual-linguistic and archaeological evidence / Parpola, Asko -- 16. The problem of the Aryans and the Soma: The botanical evidence / Nyberg, Harri -- Author Index -- General Index -- Backmatter