Another Hyderabad in Deccan

This anthology brings together nine essays that explore the rich, layered visual and material culture of Hyderabad and the Deccan region. Uniquely positioned at the intersection of art history, ethnography, and historical research, the book engages with artisanal practices, architectural legacies, everyday objects, and lived experiences to foreground the city as a dynamic archive of tangible and intangible heritage. Drawing from fieldwork, archival materials, personal narratives, photographs, and maps, the essays investigate underexplored cultural forms-such as Deccani eidgahs, the Qutb Shahi dargah's architectural lineage, a neglected health museum, Buddhist artifacts, and the trajectories of artisans and craftspeople. These narratives offer alternative modes of accessing history, beyond institutional archives, and highlight the experiential and embodied dimensions of artistic practice in the region. The book critically contributes to emerging discourses on South Asian art history, especially on cities and regions, by connecting material culture with ecology, memory, community, and contemporary urban life. It provides fresh methodological approaches for researchers working on South Asian visual and material culture and offers a valuable resource for students, academics, cultural practitioners, and policymakers engaged in heritage, artisanal livelihoods, and community-based initiatives. By re-mapping Hyderabad through biographies, habitual practices, and collective memory, this volume sheds light on histories that often escape formal archival frameworks. It proposes a new lens to view the city-not just as a site of heritage, but as an evolving, lived archive, and a critical site for interdisciplinary research in the post-Independence period.