With contributions from both senior and young anthropologists, North-East India: A Handbook of Anthropology brings together nineteen essays on North-East India. Carefully crafted with the most up-to-date and competent review of literature on North-East India, the book is divided into four sections.

The first section of the book deals with the prehistoric archaeology of North-East India and discusses the status of archaeological research in the region. The chapters in the second section reconstruct the colonial context in the light of the then socio-economic and political scenario of the country in general and the region in particular, the evolution of various colonial policies towards the tribes of the region, also giving us a glimpse of Hutton and Mills as ethnographers and administrators. The following section focuses on approaches and models of physical anthropology of North-East India, understanding human growth, dermatoglyphics, dental anthropology and population genetics. The last section probes into the social-cultural anthropology of the region with chapters on tribal social organisation and agrarian relations, among others.

T. B. Subba is Professor and Head of the Department of Anthropology, North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong.

List of Tables and Figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction by T. B. Subba

Part I: Prehistoric North-East India
1. Prehistoric Archaeology of North-East India (H. C. Sharma)
2. Ethno-Archaeology of North-East India  (Abdullah Ali Ashraf and Sankar Kumar Roy)
3. Megaliths of North-East India (Quinbala R. Marak)

Part II: Colonial North-East India
4. J. H. Hutton and Colonial Ethnography of North-East India (P. K. Misra)
5. J. P. Mills and India’s North-East (B. R. Rizvi)
6. Reconfiguring Colonial Ethnography  (Jelle J. P. Wouters)

Part III: Physical AnAnthropology of North-East India
7. Physical Anthropology in North-East India: An Overview of Approaches and Models (R. Khongsdier)
8. Understanding Human Growth (Bapukan Choudhury and Gulrukh Begum)
9. Anthropometric Assessment of Growth and Body Composition (R. Khongsdier)
10. Population Genetics of North-East India (T. Shyamacharan Singh)
11. Dental Anthropology of North-East India (Dhruba Kumar Limbu)
12. Dermatoglyphic Traits in North-East India (Sarthak Sengupta)

Part IV: Social-cultural An thropology in North-East India
13. Anthropological Survey of India and the Social Anthropology of India’s North-East (Jayanta Sarkar)
14. A Short History of Social-Cultural Anthropology in North-East India (A. N. M. Irshad Ali)
15. Tribal Social Organisation (R. K. Kar)
16. The Anthropology of Lesser-known Tribes (Sarit K. Chaudhuri)
17. Agrarian Relations in Tribal Milieu (S. B. Chakrabarti)
18. Indigenous Knowledge and Management of Natural Resources (Anungla Aier and Sapu Changkija)
19. Shifting Cultivation in North-East India (Jonali Devi)

Contributors
Index

‘In this volume, Tanka B. Subha has gathered a splendid collection of articles that cover the full range of anthropology, as it has been conducted for a century and a half in North-East India.  We find penetrating essays on colonial anthropology as well surveys on the most modern work in prehistory, physical anthropology, and social-cultural anthropology.  This is the book to turn to for the most inclusive and up-to-date surveys of North-East Indian anthropology as it has been, and is being, practised by experts in its many specialties.’

Robbins Burling, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology and Linguistics, Michigan University, USA

‘This handbook, containing nineteen chapters on prehistory, colonial ethnography, physical anthropology and social-cultural anthropology of North-East India, will prove to be a valuable resource not only for teachers and students of anthropology but also for those engaged in sociology, history, geography, and economics of the region. I strongly recommend it to all master’s and doctoral students in and from the region.’

A.C. Bhagabati, Professor (Retd.) of Anthropology & Former Vice-Chancellor of Rajiv Gandhi University, Arunachal Pradesh