Ravi Korisettar

Ravi Korisettar is currently Adjunct Professor at NIAS, Bengaluru and also Hon. Director Robert Bruce Foote Sanganakallu Archaeological Museum, Ballari. He served in the Department of History and Archaeology, Karnatak University, Dharwad, from 1989-2013.

Korisettar's discovery of the Youngest Toba Tuff (YTT), volcanic ash of Sumatra origin, in peninsular river deposits was hailed as a ‘great discovery’ by the Indian press and its significance in dating the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic has brought the Indian subcontinent at the forefront of debate on expansion of modern humans out of Africa.

He discovered a large number of prehistoric painted rock shelters in the Kurnool District of Andhra Pradesh and these have led to a series of investigations on identifying suitable dating methods for rock art and understanding the non-material culture of the authors of these paintings.

He is co-editor of Quaternary Environments and Geoarchaeology of India (Geological Society of India,1995), The Rise of Early Human Behaviour in Global Context (Routledge,1998), Indian Archaeology in Retrospect (ICHR and Manohar [4 volumes], 2001/2), and a special issue of Quaternary International (Vol. 258, 2011) and editor of Beyond Stone and More Stones (Vol. 1: 2017 and Vol. 2: 2018) and the third volume is in press. His collaborative publications have been well cited and his H-index is on the increase.