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BA (Hons.) History
University of Delhi
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1. NEOLITHIC AGE
The Neolithic Age is the concluding phase of the Stone Age. Sir John Lubbock coined the term 8neolithic9 in his book Prehistoric Times (1865). He used this term to denote an age in which stone tools were more refined and polished. The Neolithic Age is generally defined as a way of life. From a global perspective, it began around 9000 BCE, but in from an Indian context it began around 7000 BCE at Mehrgarh in Baluchistan. By this time, people had progressed from subsisting exclusively on hunting and gathering to agriculture. They began to settle in one place, domesticate animals, build houses, bury and burn their dead, use skin as cloth, cook their food and make pottery. They built potter9s wheel and subsequently invented crafts such as spinning, weaving and bead-making. Considering all these developments, V. Gordon Childe called this phase the 8Neolithic Revolution9. However, this concept has been criticized as the term 8revolution9 is synonymous to a sudden or abrupt change while all the developments of the Neolithic Age have been gradual.
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE NEOLITHIC PERIOD :
The Neolithic Age is generally associated with relatively self-sufficient village communities with an equilibrium between food production and population. Food production might have resulted in increasing population, which perhaps led to the need to store food, thus encouraging pot-making. The fertile land of the regions must have supported greater production and increase in settlements. These settled agricultural communities may have sometimes overwhelmed the hunter-gatherers and thus encourage a concentration of people. This eventually may have made urbanization possible in the long run. According to Romila Thapar, the transition to agriculture may have been brought by women who stayed at home while men went out hunting. Being at home may have given them the opportunity to sow and then tend what they had sown. But the more extensive change came with plough agriculture, which was handled by men. The increasing emphasis on farming, according to Thapar, anticipates the potentiality for chiefdoms where initially the family as a unit, or as a constituent part of a clan, herded animals and cultivated crops.
Technologically, the tools of the Neolithic period were well developed. The stone toolswere polished. The removal of rough edges increased their functional effectiveness as in the case of polished stone axes. At some sites, grass huts gave way to wattle-and-daub huts, and these in turn to mud-brick structures, small granaries and water storage systems. Handmade pottery was also made by wheel. According to Upinder Singh, since pottery was connected to food storage and cooking, which was the task of women, they may have played a significant role in the technical advances related to pot-making. Lapidary art is one of the new features of this period which is evident in south Indian Neolithic sites. Mehrgarh has yielded earliest evidence of Neolithic features in northwest India ,The Kashmir Valley in North India, the ashmounds at Paiyampalli in South India are some of the important neolithic sites.
- MEGALITHS
The term 8megalith9 means a great or huge stone in Greek. It usually refers to burials amidst stones in graveyards away from the habitation area. Most of its information comes from the Iron Age cultures of South India, that is, nearly around 1000 BCE. Major regions covered by this culture are Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. The megalithic burials show a variety of methods for the disposal of the dead and are classified under different categories depending on their features: (1) rock cut caves, (2) stone circles (3) pit burials, (4) dolmenoid cists, (5) menhirs and (6) cap stones or Toppikkals. Rock cut caves are found at sites such as Chovvannur, Kakkad and Kattakampal in Kerala. They reflect the features of various forms of megalithic
monuments such as menhirs, dolmenoid cists and cairns. Bones of the dead were collected in large urns and buried into a pit. The pit was marked by a stone circle or a capstone or both. Menhirs are monolithic pillars planted vertically into the ground. Major sites having menhirs are Maski, Bellary, Raichur and Gulbarga. Cap stone or Toppikkals have hood-like structures. These kinds of megaliths are encountered in the Cochin and Malabar regions extending along the Western Ghats.
The chronology of megalithic cultures has been debated by various historians. This is because only a few radiocarbon dates are so far available from megalithic habitations. R. E. M. Wheeler places these cultures between the third century BCE and the first century CE. based on archaeological evidences. B. K. Thapar assigned the time period between the second century BCE and the middle of the first century CE. The evidences from Hallur suggest the date of 1000 BCE for the earliest phase of these cultures. In Tamil Nadu, Paiyampalli is recorded as a site from the fourth century BCE. While A. Sundara, on the basis of his explorations and excavations, pushed the date of the megaliths in north Karnataka as early as 1200 BCE.
According to researches, the megalithic culture seems to herald the Iron Age in South India. The evidences show that the people fully used this metal. The use of stone dropped and most of the information about the iron usage came from the megalithic burials. Iron objects have been found universally in all the megalithic sites right from Junapani near Nagpur in the Vidarbha region down to Adichanallur in Tamil Nadu in the far south. With the introduction of iron, there were many changes except in the house plans, and the most remarkable change was in the method of disposing the dead which had become elaborate. Instead of laying the dead accompanied by four or five pots in a pit in the house, they were now buried in a separate ground—a cemetery or a graveyard away from the house.
The megalith burials have yielded a variety of grave goods such as pottery, weapons and implements mostly of iron but also of stone and copper, ornaments such as beads of terracotta, semi-precious stones, gold, copper and shell, and armlets or bracelets, and also the presence of paddy husk and chaff and skeletal remains of animals. This is an indication of their belief in life after death and hence essential goods were provided. They believed in the animistic cults, and this is evident by the occurrence of animal bones of domestic animals such as cattle, sheep and goats and wild animals such as wolves in the megaliths. Some graves have also yielded Roman coins which suggest their entry into history and their participation in the trade networks with the outside world. Megalithic people were agro-pastoral and the sites have yielded remains of sheep or goat and cattle and also millets and pulses. Tank irrigation is one of their greatest achievements. These tanks provided water for their household life as well as to their crops. The kind of grave goods which have been discovered from different sites indicate some kind of existence of the class system. They lived in houses which were probably in the form of huts with thatched roofs, supported by wooden posts, as post holes have been found at the excavated sites of Maski and Brahmagiri. Anthropological evidences provide us some information that there might have been a possibility of production relations transcending clan ties and kinship in such remote periods of tribal descent groups. They constructed their graves in unproductive, rocky gravelly lands so that the agricultural lands were not wasted.
The Black and Red Wares (BRW), which are wheel-turned pottery, are the most prominent ceramics found. Some of the pots with lids with decorated finials in the shape of birds and animals appear to be ceremonial wares. Technical and cultural fronts show advanced development. The subsidiary economic activities also included smithery, carpentry, pottery, lapidary, basket making and stone cutting. Iron objects have been found in largest numbers in the megalithic sites right from Junapani near Nagpur in Vidarbha down to Adichanallur in the south. They show evidence of identical tools.
HOI 1 - mbcfx bmn,
Course: BA (Hons.) History
University: University of Delhi
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