Indian archaeological sequence begins at least half a million years ago: Haslam & Korisettar

Archaeology
February 11, 2011

Archaeology involves the recovery of objects and information that
inform us about past behaviour. It is the primary means by which we
can understand the way people have adapted to and moved through their
environment, and in the Indian subcontinent most of the
archaeological evidence from the Palaeolithic period takes the form
of stone tools.

The Indian archaeological sequence begins at least half a million
years ago, with Lower Palaeolithic artefacts described as Acheulean.
Thes include disctinctive large cutting tools that have been shaped
into forms known as handaxes and cleavers, and which were useful for
a range of cutting and chopping tasks. The Acheulean inhabitants of
India were not modern humans, instead they were descendants of a
human ancestor that had previously expanded its range outside Africa.
These archaic hominins (members of the human lineage since our split
with the other apes ~6 million years ago) were likely related to
other species living in East Asia and Africa during the Middle
Pleistocene period, such as Homo erectus and Homo heidelbergensis,
but the precise species is unknown, as few fossils have been
recovered from the subcontinent. Many Acheulean assemblages from
India were made from rocks such as quartzite and limestone, collected
close to where hominins were living. The size of the handaxe and
cleaver forms diminishes through time, and the presence of these
reduced artefacts has contributed to delineation of the final phase
of the Lower Palaeolithic as the Indian Late Acheulean (ILA). The
most recent ILA assemblages appear to survive into the Late
Pleistocene period (~125,000-10,000 years ago), and important sites
of this period include Bhimbetka, Patpara, Attirampakkam and
Lakhmapur.

Excavation at the Middle Palaeolithic Jwalapuram Locality 22 site,
Andhra Pradesh, India (Photo by M. Haslam, 2009)

http://sites.google.com/site/intosouthasia/_/rsrc/1295811372392/archa...

Following the Acheulean, stone tools in the Indian subcontinent have
been classified as Middle Palaeolithic. The Indian Middle
Palaeolithic (IMP) may be defined as a flake-based industry in which
smaller cutting and scraping tools were struck from prepared cores.
This marked a shift from the Acheulean practice of shaping large
rocks and flakes into tools, and there is a shift also in the types
of rocks preferred, towards more fine-grained materials such as
chert. New forms of artefact appear at this stage, including pointed
flakes that have been shaped to fit one end into a shaft for use as a
spear. There is a debate over whether the ILA and IMP are independent
phenomena, produced by different species, or whether they are two
ends of the same spectrum resulting from one species changing its
manufactring techniques. From finds in the eastern Mediterranean
region we know that the first modern humans to expand out of Africa
used Middle Palaeolithic technology, so it is plausible that the
introduction of the IMP is related to modern human arrival in the
subcontinent. This is an ongoing debate, however, and one of the aims
of the Into South Asia project is to help resolve issues such as this
one. The IMP is dated from around 100,000 years ago up until 40,000
years ago, with important sites including those around Jwalapuram in
southern India and Didwana in northwest India.

The final stage of the Palaeolithic in India is the Upper
Palaeolithic. This term has also been used to describe the technology
associated with modern humans moving into Europe about 40,000 years
ago, but the Indian and European contexts and artefacts are quite
different. The Indian Upper Palaeolithic (IUP) is focused on
production of microlithic artefacts only a few centimetres long,
which can be shaped and hafted onto arrows, knives and other
implements. The raw materials used shift again from those seen in the
IMP, with greater preference for stones such as chalcedony and quartz
in many sites. We know from archaeological sites to the east of India
(especially in Australasia) that modern humans initially moved into
South Asia well before the earliest evidence for IUP technology. This
means that the IUP probably developed locally, and does not signal
new human arrivals.

Artefacts from the Indian Upper Palaeolithic, Jwalapuram Locality 9
rockshelter, Andhra Pradesh (Petraglia et al. 2009, PNAS 106:12261-
12266)

http://sites.google.com/site/intosouthasia/_/rsrc/1295811955590/archa...

Apart from chronologies, stone tools can also tell us about the
adaptations that people had to their environment, such as whether
they had to move around frequently to find food, and how they coped
with the need to conserve resources. One exciting area of future
research, for which the study of technology is important, is to
examine whether modern humans interacted with archaic hominins within
the Indian subcontinent. Genetic research demonstrates that humans
interbred with Neanderthals after they had left Africa, and while a
meeting between modern humans and Neanderthals is unlikely to have
occured in India, the possiblity remains that other kinds of contact
may have occured there, including exchange of techniques for making
stone tools. Such contact may help explain why ILA and IMP
assemblages can appear similar, for example. However, any questions
of contact will remain hypothetical until more precise dates, further
technological analysis, and hopefully more fossil finds can be
obtained.

Archaeological research is able to determine in which kinds of
landscapes people were living, and to plot population movements
through time as humans spread into India. To achieve this task,
archaeologists work closely with environmental scientists (who
recreate past plant and animal communities and determine which areas
were favourable for habitation) and geneticists (who use data
collected from modern people to reconstruct the routes and to a
certain extent the dates in whch people first arrived in different
areas). Further information on these approaches can be found using
the links above.

Michael Haslam (University of Oxford) and Ravi Korisettar (Karnatak
University)

http://sites.google.com/site/intosouthasia/archaeology

End of forwarded message from S. Kalyanaraman

Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti

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