01-31-2007, 12:10 AM
INDIAN CULTURES,OTHERS THEN INDUS-SARASWATI
1-The black and red ware culture (BRW)
is an early Iron Age archaeological culture of the northern Indian Subcontinent. It is dated to roughly the 12th â 9th centuries BC, and associated with the post-Rigvedic Vedic civilization.
In some sites, BRW pottery is associated with Late Harappan pottery, and according to some scholars like Tribhuan N. Roy, the BRW may have directly influenced the Painted Grey Ware and Northern Black Polished cultures. [1] BRW pottery is unknown west of the Indus Valley.
It is reaches from the upper Gangetic plain in Uttar Pradesh to the eastern Vindhya range and West Bengal.
Researches and findings suggest that the Black-and-Red pottery flourished in Bengal around 1500 BC and continued to evolve, well past the Chalcolithic age, into the historical period around the 3rd century BC.
Use of Iron, although sparse at first, is relatively early, postdating the beginning of the Iron Age in Anatolia (Hittites) by only two or three centuries, and predating the European (Celts) Iron Age by another two to three hundred years. Recent findings in Northern India show Iron working since 1800 BC. According to Shaffer, the "nature and context of the iron objects involved [of the BRW culture] are very different from early iron objects found in Southwest Asia."
It is succeeded by the Painted Grey Ware culture.
2-The Painted Grey Ware culture (PGW)
is an Iron Age culture of Gangetic plain, lasting from roughly 1100 BC to 350 BC. It is contemporary to, and a successor of the Black and red ware culture. It probably corresponds to the late Vedic civilization. It is succeeded by Northern Black Polished Ware from ca. 500 BC.
B.B. Lal associated Hastinapura, Mathura, Ahicchatra, Kampilya, Barnawa, Kurukshetra and other sites with the PGW culture, the (post-) Mahabharata period and the Aryans in the 1950s. Furthermore, he pointed out that the Mahabharata mentions a flood and a layer of flooding debris was found in Hastinapura. However, B.B. Lal considered his theories to be provisional and based upon a limited body of evidence, and he later reconsidered his statements on the nature of this culture. (Kenneth Kennedy 1995).
The pottery style of this culture is different from the pottery of the Iranian Plateau and Afghanistan (Bryant 2001). In some sites, PGW pottery and Late Harappan pottery are contemporaneous.
The archaeologist Jim Shaffer (1984:84-85) has noted that "at present, the archaeological record indicates no cultural discontinuities separating Painted Grey Ware from the indigenous protohistoric culture."
According to Chakrabarti (1968) and other scholars, the origins of the subsistence patterns (e.g. rice use) and most other characteristics of the Painted Grey Ware culture are in eastern India or even southeast Asia.
3-The Cemetery H culture
developed out of the northern part of the Indus Valley Civilization around 1900 BC, in and around the Punjab region. It was named after a cemetery found in "area H" at Harappa.
The Cemetery H culture is part of the Punjab Phase, one of three cultural phases that developed in the Localization Era of the Indus Valley Tradition.
The distinguishing features of this culture include:
The use of cremation of human remains. The bones were stored in painted pottery burial urns. This is completely different to the Indus civilization where bodies were buried in wooden coffins. The urn burials and the "grave skeletons" were nearly contemporaneous.
Reddish pottery, painted in black with antelopes, peacocks etc., sun or star motifs, with different surface treatments to the earlier period.
Expansion of settlements into the east.
Rice became a main crop.
Apparent breakdown of the widespread trade of the Indus civilization, with materials such as marine shells no longer used.
Continued use of mud brick for building.
The Cemetery H culture also "shows clear biological affinities" with the earlier population of Harappa.
The archaeologist Kenoyer noted that this culture "may only reflect a change in the focus of settlement organization from that which was the pattern of the earlier Harapppan phase and not cultural discontinuity, urban decay, invading aliens, or site abandonment, all of which have been suggested in the past." (Kenoyer 1991: 56).
Remains of the culture have been dated from about 1900 BCE until about 1300 BCE. Together with the Gandhara grave culture and the Ochre Coloured Pottery culture, it is considered by some scholars a nucleus of Iron Age Vedic civilization.
4-The Gandhara grave (or Swat)
culture emerges from ca. 1600 BC, and flourishes in Gandhara ca. 1500 BC to 500 BC (i.e. possibly up to the time of Pa?ini).
Relevant finds, artifacts found primarily in graves, were distributed along the banks of the Swat and Dir rivers in the north, Taxila in the southeast, along the Gomal River to the south. The pottery finds show clear links with contemporary finds from southern Central Asia (BMAC) and the Iranian Plateau.
Simply made terracotta figurines were buried with the pottery, and other items are decorated with simple dot designs. Horse remains were found in at least one burial.
The Gandhara grave people have been associated by some scholars with early Indo-Aryan speakers, and the Indo-Aryan migration into India, that, fused with indigenous elements of the remnants of the Indus Valley Civilization (OCP, Cemetery H), gave rise to the Vedic civilization.
The Ghandara Grave culture people shared biological affinities with the population of neolithic Mehrgarh, which suggests a "biological continuum" between the ancient populations of Timargarha and Mehrgarh.
Asko Parpola (1993: 54), argues that the Gandhara grave culture is "by no means identical with the Bronze Age Culture of Bactria and Margiana". Tulsa (1977: 690-692) argues that this culture and its "new contributions" are "nevertheless in line with the cultural traditions of the previous period", and remarks that "to attribute a historical value to ... the slender links with northwestern Iran and northern Afghanistan ... is a mistake", since "it could well be the spread of particular objects and, as such, objects that could circulate more easily quite apart from any real contacts." Antonini (1973), Stacul and other scholars argue that this culture is not related with the Beshkent and Vakhsh cultures of Tajikistan
The Ochre Coloured Pottery culture (OCP), is a 3rd millennium BC Bronze Age culture of the Ganga-Yamuna plain. It is a contemporary to, and a successor of the Indus Valley Civilization. The OCP marks the last stage of the North Indian Bronze Age and is succeeded by the Iron Age black-and-red ware and painted-gray ware cultures. Early specimens of the characteristic ceramics found near Jodhpura, Rajasthan date to the 3rd millennium,this site of Jodhpura is in district Jaipur and must not be confused with the city of Jodhpur, and the culture reaches the Gangetic plain in the early 2nd millennium.
H. C. Bharadwaj in his work Aspects of Ancient Indian Technology, Motilal Banarsidass, New Delhi 1979 had established that copper hoards, being found in the same layers as Ochre Coloured Pottery by B. B. Lal, belonged to 1100-800 BC, but K.N. Dikshit in: Essays in Indian Protohistory, 1979 suggested a date from 2650 to 1180 BC based on thermoluminescent method.
On the other hand R. C. Gaur excavations at Lal Qila gave also a thermoluminiscent date for OCP in time bracket of 2030 and 1730 BC with a mean date of 1880 BC.
There are even a claim of earlier dates by M. D. N. Sahi: "...settlements of the OCP-Copper Hoards culture, datable between 3700-3000 B.C., as discussed by the present author elsewhere, are found existing in the districts of Allahabad (Sringaverapura and Mirapatti) and Varanasi (Kamauli)." (Sahi's paper "Neolithic Syndrome of the Ganga Valley" at National Seminar on the Archaeology of the Ganga Valley, December 2004).
It is worth to mention the work of archaeometallurgists R. Balasubramaniam, T. Laha and A. Srivastava who analyzed a copper hoard piece along with an Ahar culture copper one at the Department of Materials and Metallurgical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur in 2003, publishing their conclusions in the paper "Long term corrosion behaviour of copper in soil: A study of archaeological analogues".
Also Deo Prakash Sharma published a work called Newly Discovered Copper Hoard, Weapons of South Asia, Delhi, 2002 in which he establishes a time between 2800 and 1500 BC for copper hoards based on analysis of copper implemets in the National Museum, New Delhi: "Till today around 5031 copper hoard implements have been reported from 197 sites mostly from Gangetic plains among which 193 are in National Museum collection. We have fixed date of copper hoards from circa 2800 to 1500 B.C. and these could be divided into two groups as follows (A) North Eastern Indian (B) Ganga-Yamuna doab and Western India. The technology of western group B is of a distinctive and advanced type and is influenced by the Harappans...The anthropomorphic figure of copper hoard is a cult object and a symbol of good omen. The lugged shouldered axes and weed chisels are a new type in copper hoard implements. The shouldered axes show their origin from South East Asia via North-East India and Middle Ganga plain. The copper hoard implements and OCP ceramic are present in stratified deposits of Ganeshwar, Jodhpura, Mithathal, Madarpur, Saipai and Khatoli...Copper hoard implements of western group show genetic relationship with Harappans" (Deo Prakash Sharma 2002).
5-Copper Hoards
refer to different assemblages of copper-based artefacts in the northern areas of the Indian Subcontinent. These are believed to date largely to the 2nd millennium BC. Few derive from controlled excavations. Different regional groups are identifiable: southern Haryana/northern Rajasthan, the Ganges-Jumuna plain, Chota Nagpur and in Madhya Pradesh, each with their characteristic artefact types. Initially the copper hoards were known mostly from the Ganges-Jumuna doab and most characterisations dwell on this material.
Characteristic hoard artefacts southern Haryana/northern Rajasthan and include certain, flat axes (celts), harpoons double axes, antenna-hilted swords etc. The doab has a related repertory. That of the Chota Nagpur area is far different and the finds seem to be ingots.
The artefacts seem to be votive in character.
The raw material can have derived from a variety of sources in Rajasthan (Khetri), Bihar/West Bengal/Orissa (especially Singhbhum) as well as Madhya Pradesh (Malanjkhand). Some scholars regard the OCP culture as late or impoverished Harappan culture, while other scholars see the OCP as an indigenous culture that is unrelated to Harappan culture. V.N. Misra (in S.P. Gupta 1995: 140) regards the OCP as "only a final and impoverished stage of the Late Harappan culture" and designates this phase as "Degenarate Harappan".
Together with the Cemetery H culture and the Gandhara Grave culture, the OCP is considered by some scholars a factor in the formation of the Vedic civilization.
6-The Northern Black Polished Ware culture (NBPW/NBP)-
of the South Asia (ca. 700 BCâ200 BC) is an Iron Age culture, succeeding the Painted Grey Ware culture. It developed beginning around 700 BC, or in the late Vedic period, and peaks from circa 500 BC - 300 BC, coinciding with the rise of the Mauryan Empire.
Malik and other scholars have noted similarities between NPB and Harappan cultures, among them the ivory dice and combs and a similar system of weights. Other similarities include the utilization of mud, baked bricks and stone in architecture, the construction of large units of public architecture, the systematic development of hydraulic features and a similar craft industry. There are however also important differences between these two cultures, e.g. in the NBP culture rice, millet and sorghum become more important. The NBP culture may reflect the first state-level organization in South Asia.
1-The black and red ware culture (BRW)
is an early Iron Age archaeological culture of the northern Indian Subcontinent. It is dated to roughly the 12th â 9th centuries BC, and associated with the post-Rigvedic Vedic civilization.
In some sites, BRW pottery is associated with Late Harappan pottery, and according to some scholars like Tribhuan N. Roy, the BRW may have directly influenced the Painted Grey Ware and Northern Black Polished cultures. [1] BRW pottery is unknown west of the Indus Valley.
It is reaches from the upper Gangetic plain in Uttar Pradesh to the eastern Vindhya range and West Bengal.
Researches and findings suggest that the Black-and-Red pottery flourished in Bengal around 1500 BC and continued to evolve, well past the Chalcolithic age, into the historical period around the 3rd century BC.
Use of Iron, although sparse at first, is relatively early, postdating the beginning of the Iron Age in Anatolia (Hittites) by only two or three centuries, and predating the European (Celts) Iron Age by another two to three hundred years. Recent findings in Northern India show Iron working since 1800 BC. According to Shaffer, the "nature and context of the iron objects involved [of the BRW culture] are very different from early iron objects found in Southwest Asia."
It is succeeded by the Painted Grey Ware culture.
2-The Painted Grey Ware culture (PGW)
is an Iron Age culture of Gangetic plain, lasting from roughly 1100 BC to 350 BC. It is contemporary to, and a successor of the Black and red ware culture. It probably corresponds to the late Vedic civilization. It is succeeded by Northern Black Polished Ware from ca. 500 BC.
B.B. Lal associated Hastinapura, Mathura, Ahicchatra, Kampilya, Barnawa, Kurukshetra and other sites with the PGW culture, the (post-) Mahabharata period and the Aryans in the 1950s. Furthermore, he pointed out that the Mahabharata mentions a flood and a layer of flooding debris was found in Hastinapura. However, B.B. Lal considered his theories to be provisional and based upon a limited body of evidence, and he later reconsidered his statements on the nature of this culture. (Kenneth Kennedy 1995).
The pottery style of this culture is different from the pottery of the Iranian Plateau and Afghanistan (Bryant 2001). In some sites, PGW pottery and Late Harappan pottery are contemporaneous.
The archaeologist Jim Shaffer (1984:84-85) has noted that "at present, the archaeological record indicates no cultural discontinuities separating Painted Grey Ware from the indigenous protohistoric culture."
According to Chakrabarti (1968) and other scholars, the origins of the subsistence patterns (e.g. rice use) and most other characteristics of the Painted Grey Ware culture are in eastern India or even southeast Asia.
3-The Cemetery H culture
developed out of the northern part of the Indus Valley Civilization around 1900 BC, in and around the Punjab region. It was named after a cemetery found in "area H" at Harappa.
The Cemetery H culture is part of the Punjab Phase, one of three cultural phases that developed in the Localization Era of the Indus Valley Tradition.
The distinguishing features of this culture include:
The use of cremation of human remains. The bones were stored in painted pottery burial urns. This is completely different to the Indus civilization where bodies were buried in wooden coffins. The urn burials and the "grave skeletons" were nearly contemporaneous.
Reddish pottery, painted in black with antelopes, peacocks etc., sun or star motifs, with different surface treatments to the earlier period.
Expansion of settlements into the east.
Rice became a main crop.
Apparent breakdown of the widespread trade of the Indus civilization, with materials such as marine shells no longer used.
Continued use of mud brick for building.
The Cemetery H culture also "shows clear biological affinities" with the earlier population of Harappa.
The archaeologist Kenoyer noted that this culture "may only reflect a change in the focus of settlement organization from that which was the pattern of the earlier Harapppan phase and not cultural discontinuity, urban decay, invading aliens, or site abandonment, all of which have been suggested in the past." (Kenoyer 1991: 56).
Remains of the culture have been dated from about 1900 BCE until about 1300 BCE. Together with the Gandhara grave culture and the Ochre Coloured Pottery culture, it is considered by some scholars a nucleus of Iron Age Vedic civilization.
4-The Gandhara grave (or Swat)
culture emerges from ca. 1600 BC, and flourishes in Gandhara ca. 1500 BC to 500 BC (i.e. possibly up to the time of Pa?ini).
Relevant finds, artifacts found primarily in graves, were distributed along the banks of the Swat and Dir rivers in the north, Taxila in the southeast, along the Gomal River to the south. The pottery finds show clear links with contemporary finds from southern Central Asia (BMAC) and the Iranian Plateau.
Simply made terracotta figurines were buried with the pottery, and other items are decorated with simple dot designs. Horse remains were found in at least one burial.
The Gandhara grave people have been associated by some scholars with early Indo-Aryan speakers, and the Indo-Aryan migration into India, that, fused with indigenous elements of the remnants of the Indus Valley Civilization (OCP, Cemetery H), gave rise to the Vedic civilization.
The Ghandara Grave culture people shared biological affinities with the population of neolithic Mehrgarh, which suggests a "biological continuum" between the ancient populations of Timargarha and Mehrgarh.
Asko Parpola (1993: 54), argues that the Gandhara grave culture is "by no means identical with the Bronze Age Culture of Bactria and Margiana". Tulsa (1977: 690-692) argues that this culture and its "new contributions" are "nevertheless in line with the cultural traditions of the previous period", and remarks that "to attribute a historical value to ... the slender links with northwestern Iran and northern Afghanistan ... is a mistake", since "it could well be the spread of particular objects and, as such, objects that could circulate more easily quite apart from any real contacts." Antonini (1973), Stacul and other scholars argue that this culture is not related with the Beshkent and Vakhsh cultures of Tajikistan
The Ochre Coloured Pottery culture (OCP), is a 3rd millennium BC Bronze Age culture of the Ganga-Yamuna plain. It is a contemporary to, and a successor of the Indus Valley Civilization. The OCP marks the last stage of the North Indian Bronze Age and is succeeded by the Iron Age black-and-red ware and painted-gray ware cultures. Early specimens of the characteristic ceramics found near Jodhpura, Rajasthan date to the 3rd millennium,this site of Jodhpura is in district Jaipur and must not be confused with the city of Jodhpur, and the culture reaches the Gangetic plain in the early 2nd millennium.
H. C. Bharadwaj in his work Aspects of Ancient Indian Technology, Motilal Banarsidass, New Delhi 1979 had established that copper hoards, being found in the same layers as Ochre Coloured Pottery by B. B. Lal, belonged to 1100-800 BC, but K.N. Dikshit in: Essays in Indian Protohistory, 1979 suggested a date from 2650 to 1180 BC based on thermoluminescent method.
On the other hand R. C. Gaur excavations at Lal Qila gave also a thermoluminiscent date for OCP in time bracket of 2030 and 1730 BC with a mean date of 1880 BC.
There are even a claim of earlier dates by M. D. N. Sahi: "...settlements of the OCP-Copper Hoards culture, datable between 3700-3000 B.C., as discussed by the present author elsewhere, are found existing in the districts of Allahabad (Sringaverapura and Mirapatti) and Varanasi (Kamauli)." (Sahi's paper "Neolithic Syndrome of the Ganga Valley" at National Seminar on the Archaeology of the Ganga Valley, December 2004).
It is worth to mention the work of archaeometallurgists R. Balasubramaniam, T. Laha and A. Srivastava who analyzed a copper hoard piece along with an Ahar culture copper one at the Department of Materials and Metallurgical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur in 2003, publishing their conclusions in the paper "Long term corrosion behaviour of copper in soil: A study of archaeological analogues".
Also Deo Prakash Sharma published a work called Newly Discovered Copper Hoard, Weapons of South Asia, Delhi, 2002 in which he establishes a time between 2800 and 1500 BC for copper hoards based on analysis of copper implemets in the National Museum, New Delhi: "Till today around 5031 copper hoard implements have been reported from 197 sites mostly from Gangetic plains among which 193 are in National Museum collection. We have fixed date of copper hoards from circa 2800 to 1500 B.C. and these could be divided into two groups as follows (A) North Eastern Indian (B) Ganga-Yamuna doab and Western India. The technology of western group B is of a distinctive and advanced type and is influenced by the Harappans...The anthropomorphic figure of copper hoard is a cult object and a symbol of good omen. The lugged shouldered axes and weed chisels are a new type in copper hoard implements. The shouldered axes show their origin from South East Asia via North-East India and Middle Ganga plain. The copper hoard implements and OCP ceramic are present in stratified deposits of Ganeshwar, Jodhpura, Mithathal, Madarpur, Saipai and Khatoli...Copper hoard implements of western group show genetic relationship with Harappans" (Deo Prakash Sharma 2002).
5-Copper Hoards
refer to different assemblages of copper-based artefacts in the northern areas of the Indian Subcontinent. These are believed to date largely to the 2nd millennium BC. Few derive from controlled excavations. Different regional groups are identifiable: southern Haryana/northern Rajasthan, the Ganges-Jumuna plain, Chota Nagpur and in Madhya Pradesh, each with their characteristic artefact types. Initially the copper hoards were known mostly from the Ganges-Jumuna doab and most characterisations dwell on this material.
Characteristic hoard artefacts southern Haryana/northern Rajasthan and include certain, flat axes (celts), harpoons double axes, antenna-hilted swords etc. The doab has a related repertory. That of the Chota Nagpur area is far different and the finds seem to be ingots.
The artefacts seem to be votive in character.
The raw material can have derived from a variety of sources in Rajasthan (Khetri), Bihar/West Bengal/Orissa (especially Singhbhum) as well as Madhya Pradesh (Malanjkhand). Some scholars regard the OCP culture as late or impoverished Harappan culture, while other scholars see the OCP as an indigenous culture that is unrelated to Harappan culture. V.N. Misra (in S.P. Gupta 1995: 140) regards the OCP as "only a final and impoverished stage of the Late Harappan culture" and designates this phase as "Degenarate Harappan".
Together with the Cemetery H culture and the Gandhara Grave culture, the OCP is considered by some scholars a factor in the formation of the Vedic civilization.
6-The Northern Black Polished Ware culture (NBPW/NBP)-
of the South Asia (ca. 700 BCâ200 BC) is an Iron Age culture, succeeding the Painted Grey Ware culture. It developed beginning around 700 BC, or in the late Vedic period, and peaks from circa 500 BC - 300 BC, coinciding with the rise of the Mauryan Empire.
Malik and other scholars have noted similarities between NPB and Harappan cultures, among them the ivory dice and combs and a similar system of weights. Other similarities include the utilization of mud, baked bricks and stone in architecture, the construction of large units of public architecture, the systematic development of hydraulic features and a similar craft industry. There are however also important differences between these two cultures, e.g. in the NBP culture rice, millet and sorghum become more important. The NBP culture may reflect the first state-level organization in South Asia.