this is an interesting monograph. It combines historical ethnography with archaeology to understand the dynamics of the shifting agricultural system of the mountain dwelling Paharia community.

The author employs a field survey conducted in the Rajmahal hills in the Santhal Parganas region of Jharkhand state in India. The main reason given by the author in undertaking this important research effort is, to look at the inaccuracy of an isolationist claim.

This is propounded by many earlier social anthropologists, who have suggested that tribal people and others involved in shifting cultivation elsewhere and those involved in subsistence farming represent a