A publication of the Archaeological Institute of America India's
Village of the Dead Volume 63 Number 3, May/June 2010 An
exclusive look at a little-known Iron Age cemetery There's no
clear path to Hire Benakal in the hills north of the Tungabhadra
River in the southern Indian state of Karnataka. If you have to
double back only two or three times on the way, you've done
well. University of Chicago anthropology graduate student Andrew
Bauer leads me through the thorns and boulders until we emerge
on a high plain surrounded by ridges. He points out knee-high
aligned stones and propped-up slabs that mark the edges of the
site. As we navigate through it, we walk around a pile of house-
sized boulders, and the massive scale of Hire Benakal, like a
city skyline in the distance, becomes apparent. On a gentle
slope are scores of dolmens (megalithic tombs) resembling houses
of cards—if playing cards were slabs of granite 10 feet tall and
weighed 10 tons or more. The monuments were built over more than
1,000 years spann