Indian archaeologist
Dilip Kumar Chakrabarti (born 27 April 1941 - )[1] is an Indian archaeologist, Professor Emeritus of South Asian Archaeology at Cambridge University, and a Senior Fellow at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge University.[2] He is known for his studies on the early use of iron in India and the archaeology of Eastern India.
Career
Dilip K Chakrabarti is the first person to hold professorship in the field of ancient Indian history at Cambridge University. He started his career as a lecturer of Archaeology at Calcutta University from 1965 to 1977. He was a reader of Archaeology at Delhi University from 1977 to 1990 and also held a tenured appointment at Visva Bharati University from 1980 to 1981. He moved to a teaching post in South Asian archaeology at Cambridge University in 1990 and was promoted to professor prior to his retirement in 2008. He has also held visiting fellowships, scholarships, teaching appointments and received grants in Cambridge, Edinburgh, Tehran, New York, Paris, Jahangir Nagar (Bangladesh) and Armidale (Australia).
He has archaeologically surveyed the Kangra valley, the whole of the Chhotanagpur plateau, the whole of the Ganga-Yamuna plain and Haryana-Panjab between 1980 and 2008. During this period he also worked out in the field the archaeology of the routes which linked the Ganga plain with the Deccan and the ancient routes of the Deccan and the southern Peninsula. After his retirement in 2008 he completed a spell of field-studies in Rajasthan. In 1963-79 he participated in archaeological field-projects in India and Iran. On these field-topics and other problems of Indian archaeology, he has authored (co-authored in two cases) 29 books (one in press) and edited/co-edited about a dozen more. He is presently Distinguished Fellow at the Delhi-based think tank, Vivekananda International Foundation, where he is also the Editor of the eleven-volume VIF series History of Ancient India.
Dr. Dilip Chakrabarti has strived to bring academic rigor into the Indian history research. [3]
Chakrabarti argues 'that South Asian archaeology need not mimic the developments in the Euro-American World, but rather it should be attentive to its own needs'.[4]
Dr. Dilip Chakrabarti also served on the Humanities jury for the Infosys Prize in 2013.
