The Monument in the Landscape: using remote sensing to understand the south Indian megaliths Srikumar M. Menon 1 , Mayank N. Vahia 2 The south Indian megaliths are believed to be the constructions of iron-using cultures that date between 1500BC to 200AD, though it is now understood that the beginning of this cultural practice may date back to the Neolithic. Despite nearly 200 years of study and some attempts to classify the disparate structures which vary in scale, form and typology, but also exhibit startling similarities over large geographical regions, a complete understanding of the meaning these monumental constructions held for the societies that authored them still elude us. We have been investigating these monuments since 2007 in an attempt to understand the knowledge systems which were extant in the period of their construction, with reference to mathematics, geometry and space-time concepts. We have studied most of the major types of megalithic monuments that exist in peninsular India. We present the results from some of these surveys especially centered on the megalith type known as “stone alignments” or “avenues”. Several of these alignment sites, like Hanamsagar and Vibhutihalli are spread out over a very large area, which makes it time- consuming to survey. Hence a case is made for studying these sites initially from high-resolution remote sensing imagery, both to plan field work as well as to understand the monument in its setting. The avenue type extant in southern coastal Karnataka typified by the monument at Nilaskal also would benefit from study of high-resolution satellite pictures of the region. The landscape-level study of the planning of these monuments with regard to site selection criteria, location with respect to quarries, settlement sites etc. are of great relevance to understanding the role these monuments played in the prehistoric societies that erected them. Often, the clues to the understanding of a monument in totality are distributed over an area much larger than the immediate surroundings of the monument. Thus the study of remote sensing imagery of the landscape around each of these sites on a scale of few tens of kilometers is expected to shed more light on the meaning of these monuments. We recommend the practice of using remote sensing imagery of megalithic sites, especially alignment and avenue sites, as an important and early component in the study, to be followed by intensive surveys on the ground of promising sites. This is not only because studying remote sensing imagery before undertaking the ground survey helps to plan the survey better, incorporating other features near the site that otherwise would have been missed, but also because it helps in arriving at a landscape-level understanding of the monument. 1 Manipal Centre for Natural Sciences, Manipal University, Manipal 2 Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai