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, Queen’s 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 Queen’s 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
2017 [with Sujit Dasgupta and Bidhan Halder] Protohistoric Settlements in Western Bengal: New Evidence from Asuralay (Birbhum, West Bengal). Puravritta: Journal of the Directorate of Archaeology and Museums, Government of West Bengal, 2: 1-15. ISSN: 2455-3565
2018 [with Claudine Bautze-Picron] An Unpublished Devī Donated during Mahendrapāla’s Reign and Her Cult in Bihar in the Ninth Century. Journal of Bengal Art 23: 215-236. ISSN: 1607-1344
2018 [with Sharmila Saha] An Inscribed Stone Sculpture of ‘Māricī’ from Birbhum (West Bengal) in the Gurusaday Museum (Kolkata). Pratna Samiksha (A Journal of Archaeology), New Series 9: 137-145. ISSN: 2229-7979
2018 Another Inscribed Image dated in the Reign of Vigrahapāla III. Journal of the Asiatic Society, 60 (4): 26-41.
2019 Archaeology of Early Medieval Rural Settlements in West Bengal: The Case of the Malla Sarul Copperplate. Early Indian History and Beyond: Essays in Honour of B.D. Chattopadhyaya, Eds. Osmund Bopearachchi and Suchandra Ghosh, pp. 175-211. New Delhi: Primus Books. ISBN: 978-93-5290-597-3
