

Rajat Sanyal is Assistant Professor and former Head (April 2017-March 2019) at the Department of Archaeology, University of Calcutta. Graduating in Anthropology (1998), followed by Master (2000) and PhD. Degrees (2009) in Archaeology form the University of Calcutta, Sanyal has been a Junior Research Fellow of the Ministry of Culture (2003-05), Government of India and Indian Council of Historical Research (2005-07) and a Post-Doctoral Associate of the Centre for Archaeological Study and Training, Eastern India (2009). He was appointed Member of the Physical Verification Committee of the Indian Museum, Kolkata (2011-2014). He has been Principal Investigator/Co-Investigator/Collaborator of projects funded by the Indian National Science Academy, British Academy, University Grants Commission (Govt. of India) and The Asiatic Society (Kolkata).
He has recently completed a research project on Environmental and Ecological Change: Gleanings from Copperplate Inscriptions of Early Bengal with funding from the Indian National Science Academy (2014-2017). A monograph titled Between Natural and Built Environs: Revisiting Rural Settlements in Copperplate Charters of Early Bengal, an outcome of this project, is under progress. He has been an excavator of a Buddhist monastic site in southern Bengal. Recently he has directed excavation at an early Protohistoric site in western Bengal. He was appointed Visiting Research Professor at the School of Natural and Built Environment, Queens University, Belfast, from May 2017 to December 2017, in connection with the British Academy-funded Project on Surveying Empires Archaeologies of Colonial Cartography in West Bengal, in collaboration with the School of Geography, Archaeology and Palaeoecology Queens University, Belfast. He is Member of the Publication Committee of The Asiatic Society, Kolkata and that of the Board of Editors, Puravritta (Journal of the Directorate of Archaeology and Museums, Government of West Bengal).
Areas of Interest of Sanyal include Eastern Indian Epigraphy, Field Archaeology with emphasis on Historical and Buddhist Archaeology, Archaeological Field Methods, History of Geopolitics in Eastern India.
Institutional personal webpage
https://www.caluniv.ac.in/academic/department/Archaeology/Rajat-Sanyal.pdf
Selected Publications