MAPPING NEOLITHIC INDIA

Author(s): Faiz Habib and Irfan Habib

Source: Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, Vol. 68, Part Two (2007), pp. 1302-1309
Published by: Indian History Congress
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44145642
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 MAPPING NEOLITHIC INDIA
Faiz Habib and Irfan Habib

Ever since Gordon Childe propounded his thesis of a Neolithic

Revolution,1 debate has ranged over the issues of the origins o
domesticated plants and the domestication of goats /sheep and cattle
and about how far ground tools can be regarded as an index of the
presence of agriculture. Questions of long-distance diffusion and th
ways in which it occurs (migration, conquest, forcible populati
displacement, or just trade) are bound up in the debate, since manifestly
the chronology of agricultural and pastoral history of each region varies
and it is hard to believe - despite New Archaeology - that every on
invented the same practice or technique independently.2
The map offered here is designed to serve as a reference aid to th
discussion on Neolithic cultures in India, from the standpoint of t
diffusion of Neolithic techniques, pottery, agriculture and pastoralis
The information shown has been compiled over a period of years, an
it is not possible to provide precise reference for each legend or spo
except in matters of controversy or late additions to knowledge. Th
basic sources used have been the following:-
1 . A. Ghosh (ed.) An Encyclopaedia of Indian Archaeology , 2 vols.
New Delhi, 1989, is an indispensable work of reference, based o
information available till c. 1980. It is understood that the ICHR is
undertaking the preparation of an updated supplement. Moreover,
the Encyclopaedia is strictly restricted to sites within the borders
of the Union of India.

2. Warwick Ball and Jean-Claude Gardin, Archaeological Gazetteer

of Afghanistany 2 vols., Paris, 1982: a very comprehensive
bibliographical survey, with accurate details of locations, and
accompanied by a rare collection of large-scale maps. Owing to
what has been happening in Afghanistan, it is unlikely that there
have been any worthwhile additions to the archaeological record
of prehistoric Afghanistan since its publication. Use of this atlas
has been supplemented by consulting V.C. Srivastava, The
Prehistoric Afghanistan, a Source Book , Allahabad, 1982.
3. Archaeological Survey of India, Indian Archaeology - a Review .
These annual volumes have been issued by the A.S.I, since 1953-
54. The last volume used by us relates to the year 1999-2000. The
series was planned as a reliable, comprehensive report of
archaeological work in the country, and despite unevenness in the

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 Archaeology 1303

quality of reporting, it has remained a

not been able to clear arrears for so long a
regret.
4. Department of Archaeology of Pakistan, Pakistan Archaeology ,
issued from 1964. Unluckily, we have been able to check only
Nos.l, 8, 9, and 10-22 (one volume covering the entire period 1975-
86).
5. The journals, Antiquity, Man and Environment , and Puratattva have
been used extensively, though some issues might have been
overlooked.

6. Much is owed to major texts on prehistory like H.D. Sankalia,

Prehistory and Protohistory of India and Pakistan , 2nd edn., Poona,
1974; D.P. Agrawal, The Archaeology of India, London, 1982;
Bridget and Raymond Allchin, The Rise of Civilization in India
and Pakistan , Indian edn., New Delhi, 1983, updated through a
shorter survey by the same authors' Origins of a Civilization : the
Prehistory and Early Archaeology of South Asia, New Delhi, 1997.
Useful material for Afghanistan, Pakistan and Northern India is
also found in A.H. Dani (ed.), History of Civilizations of Central
Asia , Vol.1, UNESCO, Paris, 1992.
Two volumes of very different kinds have provided both
valuable factual material and debatable answers to questions. G.R.
Sharma, et al., From Hunting and Food Gathering to Domestication
of Plants and Animals... Excavations at Chopani Mando ,
Mahadaha , and Mahagara, for the Neolithic transition in Northern
India; and Gregory L. Possehl, Indus Age: the Beginnings , New
Delhi, 1999, for much material on the Neolithic cultures of the
north-west. On South Indian Neolithic the two recent contributions
consulted are: K. Paddayya, Chapter 4 in his (ed.) Recent Studies
in Indian Archaeology, New Delhi, 2002, and D.Q. Fuller, N. Boi vin
and R. Korisetter, 'Dating the Neolithic of South India' , in Antiquity ,
Vol.81 (No. 313) 2007, pp.755-778.
7. For locating sites, the Survey of India maps on the quarter-inch
scale (now 1:2,50,000) have been used. The task would become so
much easier if the Gazetteer of India and Pakistan , prepared by
the Geographical Section, General Staff, Army Headquarters, New
Delhi, 1950, 4 vols, (continuous pagination) listing all places
appearing on the Quarter Inch maps with exact co-ordinates, were
to be made available to Indian libraries. In lieu of these volumes
help has been taken from G. Pallet, P. Eggermont and G. van
Damme, Archaeological Sites Atlas , Part II of the Corpus

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1 304 IHC: Proceedings , 68th Session, 2007
Topographicum Indae Antique, Leuven, 1990. It does not, however,
cover sites discovered subsequent to 1980. West Bengal sites have
been checked with the excellent Annotated Archaeological Atlas
of West Bengal , Vol.1, Prehistory and Protohistory , ed. B.D.
Chattopadhyaya, Gautam Sengupta and Sambhu Chakrabarty, New
Delhi 2005. We, however, have not been able to use K. Rajan,
Archaeological Gazetteer of Tamilnadu, Thanjavur, 1997, which
would doubtless have improved our South Indian mapping.
8. For carbon dates with calibrations our major source has been G.
Possehl, Radio Carbon Dates for South Asian Archaeology ,
University of Pennsylvania, 1989, supplemented by dates (with,
unfortunately, varying schemes of calibration) furnished in various
reports. The journal Radiocarbon has also been consulted.
It will be appreciated that all the information gathered cannot be placed
on a single map. It must be classified and reduced to essentials (a
subjective procedure) and then adapted to a cartographic scheme.
We should first revert to the first paragraph of the paper and remind
the reader that this map does not represent India at a particular time,
though practically all cultures whose sites are marked here, are older
than 1 500 BC. It does not show the chalcolithic and bronze cultures of
that time, and so the Indus Civilization of the third millennium BC is
not represented at all. On the other hand, some coverage is given to
Mesolithic sites (very old ones too, in Sri Lanka) because the question
whether farming could exist without producing ground tools, is relevant
to the basis of thè rise of Neolithic tools.

In the north-west, the question is answered easily enough. A glance

at the Map (in this paper, Parts I and II of the Map) will show that
Neolithic tools were already present at Aq Kupruk in North Afghanistan
where sheep and goat appear to have been domesticated as early 7,000
BC, if not by 10,000 BC). At the famous site of Mehrgarh wheat and
barley were cultivated already by 7000 BC, and goat has been
domesticated by then. The tool kit was Neolithic (in actual fact, ground
tools and microliths), but pottery was still not made. By 5000 BC when
hand-made pottery appears, the zebu cattle and sheep have been
domesticated. Jalilpur in the Punjab, representing a very late Neolithic
site, gives evidence of cattle domestication, c.3500 BC.
The same association of Neolithic tools with agriculture and cattle
domestication appears in the Kashmir Neolithic. At Burzahom, the first
phase of the Neolithic is pre-ceramic, in which wheat, barley and lentil
began to be sown, c.2500 BC, while ox, sheep, goat and buffalo were
domesticated and rice cultivated by 2000 BC. To its west in the Swat

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 Archaeology 1305

Valley, the Neolithic culture on the eve o

had wheat and barley cultivated by 3000
BC.

Complexities begin when we move out of the Indus zone and turn
to Bagor in the Aravallis. Here while the Mesolithic culture was still
pre-ceramic, the zebu ox, sheep and goat appear to have been
domesticated by 5000 BC. Copper use began without the intrusion of
Neolithic tools around 2600 BC. At Adamgarh, in Central India, in a
Mesolithic phase, the zebu ox, buffalo and sheep are claimed to have
been domesticated as early as 6000 BC.
In the Gangetic basin considerable excavation at Lahuradewa, East
U.P., did not yet enable the excavators to say whether the toolkit was
Mesolithic; apparently no Neolithic tools were found. Yet the excavators
report rice being cultivated at the beginning of the carbon-dated period,
5295 BC, and barley by c.2300 BC. (On rice, see below).3 At Damdama
in Central U.P., barley appeared at about the same date (2500 BC),
while the culture was Mesolithic, and pre-ceramic. Similarly, in West
Bengal at Mahisdal, the tool-kit was still Mesolithic, when rice began
to be cultivated around 1500 BC.

In the Southern Neolithic the ashmounds at sites of the third

millennium BC attest to the domestication of cattle.4 What is surprising
is the late appearance of agricultural crops. Wheat and barley appear
at Sanganakallu no earlier than 1 900 BC, at Piklihal, at c. 1 800 BC and
at Kupgal around 1700 BC. Pearl Millet or Bajra appears at Haliur, no
earlier than 1600 BC. Are we to assume from this gap that throughout
the third millennium BC, pastoralism, but not agriculture was practised
by people who yet had Neolithic tools?
The case of Sri Lanka is still more interesting. We can see from
our map that the island had a Mesolithic culture going back to 34,000
years ago (at Fahien Cave), with other sites like Batadamba-Lcna
containing microliths 28,000 years ago - dates not matched yet by
any Mesolithic site in India. At Belilena there is evidence of (wild?)
millet around 10,000 BC, but there is apparently no sign of agriculture,
which seems to have arrived in Sri Lanka along with iron, c.800 BC.
The country thus did not witness either a Neolithic or Chalcolithic
phase, whereas South India missed out only the Chalcolithic.
What we can conclude from this diversity of tool-agriculture
relationships is that while Neolithic tools, being essentially stones
ground down, were linked to agricultural operations, the technique once
created and adopted in Neolithic cultures, then diffused among pre-
Neolithic cultures independently of the act that it apparently originated

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1306 ¡HC: Proceedings , 68th Session, 2007

from, namely, the grinding of grain seeds.

On the present evidence, the Neolithic techniques appear to have
diffused largely from the north-west. The preceramic Neolithic dates
at Mehrgarh in north-east Baluchistan, and at Aq Kupruk and Kara
Kamar in north Afghanistan are much older than any dates for the
Neolithic within the remaining parts of South Asia.
The cultivation of wheat and barley can also be seen similarly to
diffuse from the north-west. Cultivated around 7000 BC at Mehrgarh,
the two crops reached the Deccan only after 2000 BC; and barley
appeared in central and eastern U.P. around the middle of the third
millennium. The domestication of sheep and goats also followed a
similar direction. That of zebu ox appears to be dated 6000 BC at
Adamgarh, a date ahead of Mehrgarh and Bagor (5000 BC). This may
well be because the zebu oxen are peculiar to India, and their
domestication was the result of a local endeavour, although it might
have taken place only because other animals were known to have been
tamed and put to use.
G.R. Sharma and his colleagues while putting the small Belan
valley, south of Allahabad, on the archaeological map claimed for
Koldihwa, a Neolithic phase as early as the late seventh millennium
BC and assigned domesticated rice found there to that period. That
date was strongly contested, and was certainly out of place with other
Neolithic dates in the area. But now at Tokwa on the Belan, excavators
claim for the Neolithic strata dates equally early (1591-4051 BC); and
at Lahuradewa in an undefined lithic phase, bearing carbon-dates
(calibrated) with a range of 5296-4220 BC, domesticated rice has been
found. The AMS date of a husk-clot, calibrated to 6409 BC is, however,
too far away from the "conventional" carbon dates to be readily
accepted,
All these dates are still much lower than the dates for domesticated
rice in China, 9200-7550 BC, and around 7000 BC in its Hemudu
culture, with almost unbroken strings of sites bearing rice datable to
5000 BC and beyond.5 It is still in the realm of speculation, but the
fact that rice-bearing sites as Lahuradewa and the Belan sites have
corded ware points to some possible links through south-east Asia,
with China; and the presence of Austro-Asiatic language in Eastern
India has also been linked to possible rice diffusion from south China.6
It is, indeed, a pity that north-east Indian sites like Daojali Hading or
Sarutaru, both Neolithic sites with hand-made corded ware, lack dates;
and so there remains a void between northern India and south-east Asia
that needs to be filled.

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 Archaeology 1307

NOTES AND REFERENCES

1. The theory was probably first presented by V. Gordon Childe in h

Himself, London, 1936, Chapter 5, and was restated in What Happened i
Harmonds worth, 1942, Chapter 3.
2. A very wide coverage of these matters is furnished in David R. Ha
Origins and Spread of Agriculture and Pastoralism in Eurasia , Lo
although some chapters are beginning to get dated.
3. See Rakesh Tewari, et al.. 'Second Preliminary Report of the Excavations at
Lahuradewa', Pragdhara , Lucknow, No. 16(2006), pp. 35-68.
4. We are able to show ashmounds at only five sites. They were in fact far more
numerous. See map in K. Paddayya (ed.), Recent Studies in Indian Archaeology ,
p. 82.

5. See for a summary of the results, Brian M. Fagan People of the Earth: An
Introduction to World Prehistory , 11* ed., 2004 (indián reprint, 2004), pp. 280-
84.

6. Ian C. Glover and Charles F.W. Higham, 'New Evidence for Rice Cultivation in
South, Southeast and East-Asia' in: David R. Harris, The Origins and Spread of
Agriculture and Pastoralism in Eurasia , London, 1996, p.416.

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1308 IHC: Proceedings , 68th Session , 2007
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