Palaeohistory of India (A Study of the Prepared Core Technique)

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About The Book

Extensive surveys undertaken by various investigators, have placed India on the Prehistoric map of the world as an important habitat of the Palaeolithic man. This book presents an up todate study of Palaeo-technology and incorporates important Palaeolithic collections of the Indian sub-continent with the aid of new scientific methods.

The book has several distinctive features. Such a detailed study of techniques which were prevalent during the period of Prehistory has never been attempted before. Statistical methods, being employed in Europe for the last thirty years or so, have been used so extensively for the first time in this sub-continent, in connection with the study of Stone Age Cultures. Some of the conclusions arrived at by the author provide new dimensions to the study of India Prehistory. A large number of illustrations depicting the stone implements as well as the statistical data is another noteworthy feature of this book,

About the Author

VIDULA JAYASWAL (b. 1947) is Deputy Superintending Archaeologist in the Archaeological Survey of India. Inspired by her grandfather (Late) Dr. K. P. JAYASWAL, the renowned Indologist and historian, she is deeply involved in the study of various aspects of Ancient Indian History, Culture and Archaeology. She was awarded the Doctorate of Philosophy of the Banaras Hindu University in 1973 for her study on, Core Technique in Palaeolithic Cultures of India'. The present book is a revised version of her Ph. D. dissertation. In subsequent years, she carried out investigations into the Stone Age Archaeology of the Chotanagpur Plateau in Bihar, as a Senior Research Fellow of the University Grants Commission and Indian Council of Historical Research.

She has published more than a dozen papers on Stone Age Archaeology of India. The paper entitled 'Statistical Studies with reference to technique of Manu facture of Palaeolithic artefacts' was included in the proceeding of the International Symposium on Radiocarbon and Indian Archaeology (1973) and 'Settlement in Stone Age India', was accepted and published by the International Symposium on Geo graphic Dimensions of Rural Settlement (1976). Influence of Raw Material on technique. Typo-technological study of Lower Palaeolithic Industries of India' and 'Some aspects of technique in the Old Stone Age Cultures of India' are some of her other important publications.

Preface

As a result of the extensive surveys undertaken by various investigators during the last century, the Stone Age Prehistory of the Indo-Pakistan sub-continent is now better known than what it was two decades ago. Time is now ripe to start specialised studies in the field of prehistoric typology and technology. This book is an attempt in this direction.

The typological studies in the Palaeolithic Period of India have so far been limited mostly to a broad classification of finished tool types. Various aspects of Palaeolithic technology too have been dealt with only in very general terms, with the result that basic questions regarding the various flake detaching techniques in different Stone Age industries are still shrouded in mystery. One of the important querries in this connection is whether there are differences among the various Palaeolithic cultures in respect of the techniques employed. It seems worthwhile examining the nature of Palaeolithic Cultures of India with the aid of scientific techno-typological analysis. Similarly, the considerations of technology may also prove helpful in determining the regional variations, if any, within a particular culture and separating one culture from the other. These obvious problems of Indian Palacohistory, and the importance of techno-typological studies prompted the author, in 1968, to take up this study for Ph. D. of the Banaras Hindu University.

Some of the scholars and experts who were consulted before starting this study were highly sceptic. Shri B.K. Thapar Prof. A. K. Narain, and Prof. F. Bordes were, however, strogly in favour. But for their encouragement and optimisim, the study would probably not have been undertaken.

Introduction

This chapter is an introduction to the present work which intends to examine the technological aspects of the various palaeolithic industries of India. In the following pages it is proposed to give at first a very brief account of the history of palaeolithic researches in the Indo-Pakistan sub-continent. It will be followed by a short discussion on the methodology adopted in the work as well as the explanation of the terms used.

HISTORY

Only a few decades after the pioneering declaration of Bouches de Perthes in France. Bruce Foote made the discovery of a cleaver in a laterite pit at Pallavaram near Madras, in the year 1863 (Foote, 1866). Inspired by this remarkable discovery, he undertook painstaking exploration in different parts of the south, central and western India and published the results in two volumes (Foote, 1914 and 1916). While Foote was busy in the Peninsular India, scholars like Coggin Brown (1917), Cockburn (1888), Hackett (Ref. to Sankalia 1962), Ball (1876) and Manley Aiyappan, (1942) found evidence of Old Stone Age in Rajputana, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, respectively. As a result of the extensive surveys undertaken by these investigators, India was placed on the prehistoric map of the world as an important habitat of the palaeolithic man. But except Bruce Foote, none of them worked on a systematic plan and most of their discoveries were of a sporadic nature.

If Foote was responsible for the initiation of the study of Old Stone Age cultures in India, it was the Yale Cambridge Expedition of 1935 which started an era of systematic investigation in the field of prehistoric research (De Terra and Paterson, 1939). This expedition not only discovered a new palaeolithic culture "Soan', in the north-western part of the Indo-Pakistan sub-continent (named after Soan, a tributary of the river Indus), but also presented for the first time a com prehensive and integrated study of the geology of the region (De Terra et al., 1934 and 1939). The team also put forth a probable correlation between the geological deposits of north-western India and those of central India, along Narmada.

**Contents and Sample Pages**