Vineet Date

Vineet Date is a PhD student in the Department of Religion at University of Georgia. He holds a bachelor’s degree in architecture from Mumbai University and worked as an architect before beginning his graduate studies. While working on his master’s thesis for Landscape Architecture at Clemson University, he encountered the concept of cultural landscape preservation. This propelled him to embark on a Master of Historic Preservation at UGA. While working on his MHP thesis, he realized the importance of socio-cultural influences on material culture and how vital it is to understand this relationship to envisage holistic preservation strategies for historic materials. His PhD research furthers this investigation to understand influences of socio-cultural norms on religious material culture by concentrating on manifestations of Sacred Groves from the Konkan region along the western coast of India. These sites (Sacred Groves) have been influenced by pre-Hindu religious theologies and house some of the material culture of pre-Hindu (pre-historic) marker in the form of rock etchings or petroglyphs. His research interests include Hindu and Buddhist religions and religious architecture, vernacular architecture, biogeography, historical ecology, pre-historic maritime trade networks and montane cultural landscapes along the West coast of India.