The Directors of the Vijayanagara Research Project are grateful to the Archaeological Survey of India for granting permission to undertake fieldwork at Vijayanagara through the 1980s and 1990s. The Government of Karnataka graciously permitted us to undertake a cooperative program of documentation with the Department of Archaeology and Museums. A succession of able Directors, starting with Dr M.S. Nagaraja Rao and continuing with K.R. Ramakrishna, KAS, has kindly provided us with a well-equipped camp in the middle of the site and has included us in its monograph series.

We should also like to acknowledge the cooperation of the various schools of archaeology and architecture in India that encouraged so many of their students to work at the site.

Foremost among the agencies that financed fieldwork at Vijayanagara during the 1980s and 1990s is the Smithsonian Institution, Washington ( http://www.si.edu/ ). Generous rupee funds from its Special Currency Program, administered by Francine Berkowitz, were made available to us through the auspices of the American Institute of Indian Studies, New Delhi, under its Director General, Dr Pradeep Mehendiratta ( http://www.indiastudies.org/ ). These funds covered the essential travel and the expenses of our field camp from 1983 to 1996. Thanks to this ongoing support, the directors were able to attract volunteer students and young professional architects and archaeologists from all over India, as well as from Australia, continental Europe, the UK and the USA. (Project Participants) The Directors also benefited grants from the British Academy
( http://www.britac.ac.uk/ ) and Society for South Asian Studies
( http://www.britac.ac.uk/institutes/SSAS/ ), both in London and from INTACH, UK ( http://www.intach.org/uktrust/index.asp ). A series of generous grants from The National Endowment for the Humanities supported the preparation and analysis of field data and preparation of publications from 1983 to 1990 ( http://www.neh.gov/index.html ). The Reader’s Digest Foundation contributed matching funds to these grants ( http://www.wallacefunds.org/WF/ ). We also express our gratitude to the National Science Foundation that provided backing in 1984-85 ( http://www.nsf.gov ).