Forests, Foragers, and Empires: Socionatural Histories of Southern India explores the complex histories of south Indian forests and foragers, focusing on historical recognitions and misrecognitions emerging from prior assumptions about human and non-human history, and about presumed fundamental characteristics of ‘nature’ and ‘culture’. Many of these essays focus on the hunting and gathering peoples of southern India, especially as they have articulated with others throughout the Holocene. Other essays consider the larger-scale landscape histories within which these are situated, from the forests themselves to local and long-standing networks of production, trade, and power.