Prehistoric Excavations and Explorations in Central India

 

After the attainment of Independence, the newly born Indian nation was struggling with the future of 350 million people. Democracy, poverty, unemployment, industrialisation, the idea of unity in diversity were the hot topics of debate. It was during this time that some scholars, armed with maps and toposheets, crisscrossed the vast Indian terrain, mostly on foot, looking for stones. These stones were the evidence of the earliest existence of human beings in India. They are the remains of a culture, perhaps the only culture, which can be called a pan-Indian culture. The evidence of this can be found right from the foothills of Shivaliks to the South Indian plains. This came to be known as Acheulian culture, a synonym for Lower Paleolithic in India.

 

The Partition in 1947 created an ‘archaeological hotspot vacuum’ in the Indian territory. The celebrated Bronze Age sites of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro along with the well-stratified Paleolithic sites became a part of the newly-formed Pakistan. Considering the gravity of the situation, Sir Mortimer Wheeler[1] suggested Indian scholars turn their attention to the ‘heart of India’. Among the end number of scholars who worked on the complex cultural strata of central India, only a few concentrated on the Stone Age sites. Though the Pleistocene deposit coinciding with the Lower Paleolithic (Acheulian) industries were discovered by William Theobald (1860)[2], H.B Medlicott[3] (1873) and H De Terra[4] (1936), major work in this area was done after 1950.

 

Accompanied by geologists, archaeologists explored the vast area of central India. They drew maps, plotting the newly-discovered Stone Age sites and categorised them into early, middle, and later Stone Age. The early Stone Age cultures correspond with the Acheulian age. For understanding Acheulian culture, interdisciplinary work became a necessity. Hence, early scholars tried to understand the Acheulian sites from the context of its geology along with the evidence of fossil remains. In most cases, the relative chronology of the stone tools with the sediments from which they were discovered was studied to discern the age of the stone tools. Hence the geoarchaeology of the Acheulian sites became important in understanding the nature of the Acheulian sites. The stone tools thus obtained from these sites are classified into different groups. This typology of the stone tools determines the nature of the site—whether it is an Acheulian site or a post-Acheulian site. This typo-technological analysis of the stone tools became the base of the Stone Age studies in India.

 

The Stone Age sequence of the central Indian Acheulian sites was established by the studies of De Terra and Paterson. Among the earliest scholars who ventured into this lesser-known corridor of human history was Dr H.D. Sankalia. He was familiar with the Stone Age sites as well as the monuments and coins discovered during the time of Alexander Cunningham[5]. Sankalia tried to bridge the gap between the prehistoric sites and historic sites in terms of timescales by excavating the sites of Navdatoli and Maheshwar.

 

His contribution to the study of Stone Age sites was carried on by A.P. Khatri. In 1958 under the CSIR research project, Khatri[6] searched for the fossil man in Narmada valley (central India). This was necessary to understand the evolutionary trend of the Stone Age sites and to date them along with the help of associated fossil remains. For this, he studied the stratigraphical sequence of the Pleistocene deposit which contains stone tools and another fossil. He was able to establish the sequence of the stone tools along with the stratigraphy of sediments, and tried to figure out the evolution of the hand-axe which is one of the standardized tool types of Acheulian culture, but could not find any hominin fossil.

 

A.K. Ghosh and D. Sen also studied the lithic cultural complex of central India.[7] Their efforts were again mainly directed at typo-technological analysis of the stone tools and comparing them with the well-dated sites of Europe, thereby trying to put the Stone Age sequence of central India in the geological timescale. Their attempts to place the Indian Stone Age in the world context was noteworthy.

 

In the 1970s, Jerome Jacobson surveyed central India and discovered a large number of Stone Age sites.[8] In one of his explorations in Raisen district of Madhya Pradesh, he discovered more than 90 localities of Acheulian occurrences within a radius of 9 km. He considered it the ‘heaviest concentration of Lower Paleolithic occurrence in the old world’.[9] He highlighted the importance of studying the surface sites, i.e., the Stone Age sites where a huge collection of stone tools are exposed to the surface. These exposed sites can give us information about adaptive strategies of the hominin groups. He discovered Acheulian sites along the riverside, nalas, forest terrain and cultivated fields. This led to the search for more surface sites in the episode of understanding central Indian Acheulian culture.

 

Prof. V.N. Misra excavated the site of Bhimbetka in 1973. Though Bhimbetka was discovered in 1957 by V.S. Wakankar, the excavation of rock shelter IIIF-23 between 1973 and 1976 has revealed the continuous occupation of humans from the Acheulian Age until the historic period. Along with these material evidences, the rock shelters of Bhimbetka were also decorated with prehistoric paintings which depict human interactions since time immemorial. The study of the human skeletal remains from the various rock shelters have shown the affinity of the human figures depicted in the paintings. But the studies of V.N. Misra[10] along with K.A.R. Kennedy[11] and J.R. Lukas shows that there is a considerable biological diversity evident from the analysis of bones and teeth from Bhimbetka localities. There is also a continuous occupation of this region of rock shelters and open-air sites. But these skeletal remains do not match with the type of skeleton of the Gond people living nearby at present. The ethnoarchaeological works done among the Gond tribe living in the vicinity also disclaim the rock shelters as they consider it the abode of demons.

 

Vidula Jaiswal studied the stone tools from the site of Mahadeo Piparia, Adamgarh, Bariapur, Lalitpur, Luni, Jamalpur, and Belan group.[12] She has classified the stone tools according to typology. She tried to understand the technological features of the stone tools of different phases, but despite them being from a different phase, she has not found much difference in the technology of their making. The slight differences in the statistical variation of the technological features may be due to differences in the individual nature of the industry. This testified the homogenous nature of the stone tools of the Acheulian period in central India.

 

Though the technological and statistical analysis of the Acheulian stone tools were done by Corvinus[13] and Gaillard[14], especially in the sites of Rajasthan and places in Nepal, the first elaborate work in central India was done by Mohammed Alam, a student of V.N. Misra. He studied the artefact assemblage from the excavated trench of IIIF-23. He proposed the variation in the artefact type between three cultural periods, i.e., Lower Paleolithic, Middle Paleolithic, and Upper Paleolithic. The technological evolution between artefacts within the same cultural period was also discussed.

 

This attempt made an advance in the study of the Acheulian period from the technological point of view than the mere classification of stone tools. Here the statistical methods used to analyse the nature of the stone tools helps to understand the refinement of the stone tools which shows the change in the behavioural pattern of the hominin group. This type of study also brings out the need for Settlement System Perspective studies, since out of the 14 excavated sites of Bhimbetka only four have yielded Acheulian cultural material. Out of them only the rock shelter IIIF-23 have yielded continuous occupation. These observations give us evidence for thinking more deeply into the subject.

 

The excavations at the Acheulian site of Tikoda[15] is another landmark in understanding the nature of the Acheulian sites of central India. This excavation was a joint venture of Deccan College, Pune and the Archaeological Survey of India. The geoarchaeological investigations in this area were led by Dr S.B. Ota and Prof. Sushama Deo in 2010 and the site was excavated continuously for five years. The site is an open-air site where the Acheulian artefacts are scattered in a vast area. One of the important features of this site from the point of view of a stone tool analyst is the occurrence of a proportionately large number of cleavers. Though this particular feature is noticed in many Acheulian sites in India, an exclusive study of cleavers to understand their technical behaviours was done here for the first time in India. This particular study has helped to understand the various patterns in the Acheulian tool type called cleavers.

 

Among the number of systematic problem-oriented research, there were also few salvage archaeological attempts. During the construction of the Narmada Sagar Dam, along with the destruction of the settlement area of the tribal population and the devastation of ecology, a number of archaeological sites had also gone under water. Among these, were a large number of prehistoric sites. According to the Reconnaissance survey of Dr S.B. Ota[16], among the hundreds of archaeological sites a number of Acheulian sites have also drowned. He has pointed out the ignorance of government and other non-governmental organisations in preserving and studying the Acheulian sites. Wherever salvage archaeology is done, priority is given to the standing structural remains more than the prehistoric sites and mounts. This clearly suggests that we are more concerned with protecting structures than with gaining wider knowledge about past cultures.  As S.B. Ota points out, ‘We prefer to relocate the structural remains but do not care to preserve buried and surface archaeological sites which are less impressive but equally or more important for providing information about our earliest cultures.’[17]

 

In 1986, the Department of Archaeology and Deccan College, Pune, under the expertise of Prof. V.N. Misra, Prof. S.N. Rajguru, along with R.K. Ganjoo and Ravi Korrisetter, launched a project aimed at locating and investigating the Paleolithic sites from the geoarchaeological point of view. The sites around the Devakachar village in Madhya Pradesh, known for the vertebrate fossils and Paleolithic assemblage, were selected for the study. This geoarchaeological investigation helped in understanding the strategy of settlement pattern. It also threw light on the possible subsistence strategy of the hominin group and the exploitation of the raw materials.

 

The geoarchaeological investigations helped in understanding the land modification due to flood and other natural causes. The archaeology of this region in relation to the geology was a major contribution to understanding the Acheulian sites. In this aspect the contribution of the geologists is praiseworthy. These interdisciplinary studies made a new epoch in understanding the nature of the archaeological sites in India. V.S. Kale, L.S. Chamayal, A.S. Khadkikar, J.N. Malik, and D.M. Maurya are few scholars whose researches gave new insights to the archaeologists in understanding the nature of the Acheulian sites, which are otherwise seen only through the angle of stone tool typology and technology. This interdisciplinary research helps in interpreting the Acheulian sites from the point of view of land-human relationship. The first hominin fossil remains from the Narmada valley was discovered by a geologist, Arun Sonakia, same goes for the first Paleolithic tool which was discovered from Pallavaram in Tamil Nadu in 1863 by the British geologist Robert Bruce Foot. This goes to show that the contribution of geology to the discipline of archaeology is obvious as well as relevant in understanding the Acheulian sites.

 

The interdisciplinary nature of archaeological studies, especially prehistoric studies, may be considered as the effect of Processual Archaeology. In Europe, this was considered as an effective way to interpret archaeological remains. But this wave has a deeper impact on the Stone Age studies in India. Indian scholars began using statistical methods in stone-tool analysis. The comparison of these stone tools with the sites of India and those of the European countries lead to new interpretations in this field.

 

The recent studies in this field show that the Indian Acheulian is different from its European counterpart, and if it should be compared it can be done with the African Acheulian which is older than the West. The Indian Acheulian, as deduced from the excavations at Attrimpakkam by Prof. Shanti Pappu and her team, is 1.5 million years old, which is a time period similar to the African Acheulian. Similar types of work inferring the technology of stone tools were also done in other parts of India by researchers including Gudrun Corvinus, Clair Gaillard, Sharma and Ota, K. Paddayya, Ajith Prasad, P.K. Behera, M.L.K. Murthy, and Neethu Agarwal.

 

In the immediate post-Independence period, there was a shift in the nature of Stone Age studies which started with the exploration of the sites and understanding the extent of it. The studies became deeper when the problem-oriented archaeological excavations came into picture. This led to the study of the Acheulian sites in a pan-Indian context and the results of the studies gave us a picture of the nature of the Acheulian sites in India. With the basic nature of the Acheulian sites in central India, and in a broader sense the whole of the Indian subcontinent, it may be said that this is the only culture which has a pan-Indian nature through the time span of over a million years. Though there is a difference in the technology of toolmaking and the exploitation of raw materials used for making the tools, there is a considerable similarity of the stone tool type exhibited throughout the Old World in India.

 

Notes