In Rajasthan almost seventy five late Stone Age sites have been found till now. About 65 sites are located on the eastern side of the Aravalli hills. The great concentration of late stone age sites lies in the Berach (Bedhach) basin in Udaipur [1] and Chitorgarh [2] districts, but their distribution extends up to the course of the river Banas into Bhilwara [3], Ajmer [4] and Tonk [5] districts.
To the east a few sites are known in Kota [6] and Jhalawar [7] districts, but for the most part the Chambal basin remains unexplored. West of the Aravallis all the known sites lie in the Luni basin, eight of them in Pali [8] and Jodhpur [9] districts and one in Barmer district .[10]
In eastern part of Rajasthan, all the sites are located on stony elevations in the gneissic plateau of Mewar. With a few exceptions these are factory sites where raw material for the microlithic industry was available in plenty, and microlithic people manufactured their tools, eventually to take them to living sites for use.
The sites are located on river banks as well as away from them. Raw material for tools consists of chert, quartzite, quartz and chalcedony. Through prismatic cores, from which blades were produced, occur in hundreds at these sites, the number of blades is negligible. Among microlithic, the only type known is blunted back blade, though unreduced blades with or without use There is, thus, no doubt that blades produced at marks are not so rare.
There is, thus, no doubt that blades produced at these sites were transported to living sites, of which some evidence is now available (See below). Non-microlithic tools are, however, quite common at these sites. These include a variety of scrapers, unifacial as well as bifacial points, borers and notched flakes. All these are made on flakes. Besides, sometimes flakes were put to use without any retouch.[11]
Three sites in this area, however, throw more light on the microlithic culture or cultures. These are: Nimbahera, Mandpia and Bagor.
Nimbahera is a small town on the river Kadmali, a tributary of the river Gambhir; 28 kilometres south of Chitorgarh.[12] Microliths are found along the river bank over the alluvial terrace. They are not associated with naturally occurring raw material, but were evidently made for use at the site.
The material used here is exclusively bluish chalcedony which has been painted to a milky white colour. Blade aud blade tools are quite plentiful here. While at other surface sites the proportion between blade cores and blades ranges between 4 : 1 to 63:1, at Nimbahera it is 8 : 1, the blades thus far outnumbering the cores.
Besides blades, microbliths and other tools, the waste debris of the lithic industry is also found. Nimbahera is thus not merely a factory site but a true living site as well, although the industrial material lying at the surface must naturally have sufferred some displacement due to rain, wind and other natural agencies.
Microliths at Nimbahera include blunted back and obliquely blunted blades as well as lunates, all beautifully made and of a very symmetric shape. Besides, there are plain as well as utilized blades, several types of scrapers, notched flakes and utilized flakes. Because of its distinctive raw material and typology the site of Nimbahera is to some extent unique in south Rajasthan.
The site of Mandpia lies on the right bank of the Banas south of Bhilwara where the river takes a sudden turn to the east after flowing north from Hamirgarh onwards.[13] Here the tools occur on as sand dune and judging from our experience at Bagor (see below) they are likely to belong to a living site. As at Nimbahera blades and blade tools here form a significant part (a little over 8 per cent) of the art factual assemblage. Finished types among microliths include backed and obliquely blunted blades. This site needs a fresh exploration.
However, the most promising site discovered so far in this part or rather the whole of Rajasthan is Bagor.[14] This site is located about 24 kilometers to the west of Bhilwara on the northern bank of river Kothari, close to the village of Bagor. The site lies on a highs and dune overlooking the river. The surface of the dune is littered with microliths over an area more than 50 meteres in diameter. It is due for a systematic excavation.
Partial excavation of the site shows that the raw material of the industry is predominantly quartz but chert and chalcedony were also used. A little over 79 percent of the artifacts are made of quartz, 20 percent of chert and less than one percent of chalcedony. Typologically 11.01 percent of the artifacts consist of plain blades, 3.55 percent are microliths, 0.68 percent (58 pieces) are scrapers and burins, and the rest 84.76 percent are constituted by waste material, namely cores and flakes.
Microliths comprise in the order of their frequency, blunted back blades, triangles are predominantly of the scalene variety but a few isosceles examples are also present. Many of these bear use marks along the sharp unmodified edge. Oblique blunted blades include true parallel sided blades with obliquely truncation as well as sub-triangular points. The two types imperceptibly merge into one another and it is not practical to make a distinction between them.
These too bear use mark along the sharp edge. Both triangles and obliquely blunted blades (or points, as sometimes they are called) were most probably used as barbs in arrow heads and harpoons for their main functional part is the long sharp edge and not the point. It is a predominantly geometric industry and is the first of its kind to be found in southern Rajasthan. Besides microliths there are several types of scrapers and burins.
A number of flat querns and rubbells and small hammer stones have also been found at Bagor. One of the querns is quite large (40×25 cm.), while others are small, up to 20 cm in length. Both querns and rubbells are similar to those known from numerous early village sites where they were unquestionably used for grinding grain. At Bagor there is no evidence that cereals were cultivated, but there can be no doubt that these objects were used for some kind of food preparation. Hammer stones were most probably employed for producing microliths.
Animal bones occurred all through the depth of the habitation. These belong to turtle, monitor lizard, cattle hog deer, spotted deer, barasingha, wild boar, rat and jackal. All the fauna represented is wild. Hunting was thus the primary source of food supply for microlithic man at Bagor. Many of the bones are charred indicating that animal flesh was roasted for consumption.
The long bones were split or broken into small pieces to extract the marrow from them. The breaking according to Smt. D. R. Shah who studied the bones was done by some blunt instrument like stone. The presence of turtle bones would indicate that the river Kothari which is now dry for most part of the year had a more assured supply of water in the past.
Stone fragments of gneiss and schist occurred plentifully at all levels. Schist blocks were highly weathered and crumbled to pieces on exposure. Their abundance and unworked character almost certainly indicate that they were part of some structures, perhaps as supports for reed and bamboo huts or wind screens. Two small pieces of reed impressed daub suggest mud plastering of the huts.
Pottery occurred right up to the bottom of the dig, but the bulk of it was confined to upper levels, and in this respect its distribution is not in harmony with that of the microliths,
Three fabrics can be distinguished in pottery. The most common is a dull brown fabric made of coarse clay mixed with plenty of mica and stone grit as temper. The outer surface of the shreds is treated with bright red slip while the inner is left without any slip or wash. The slip has largely weathered away revealing a dull brown surface but clear traces of it are seen on many shreds.
The base of the dishes and basins and the portion of the vases lying below the girth were roughened by the application of a paste of coarses and clay. The inner surface was scooped by grass or similar material leaving horizontal scratching that poorly simul ate wheel striations. All vessels appear to be entirely hand-made.
They are generally ill-baked, in some cases not even adequately sun-dried before firing. The shreds are very fragmentary but rim pieces suggest flat bottomed shallow dishes and or basins with straight or convex sides, convex sided bowl with beveled rim, and jars with beaded rim. The decoration consists of incised groups of lines, chevrons and herring bone patterns, and cut strokes and finger impressions on appliqué bands.
This ware roughly recalls the bright red-slipped ware of Ahar, and one bowl shred is suggestive of black- and-red ware from the same site. The resemblances between the two sites are, however, remote and Bagor pottery is much inferior to that from Ahar. This ware occurs through the deposit at Bagor and accounts for 71 percent of the pottery, from that site.
The second fabric accounts for 27.4 percent of the pottery and occurs only in the upper half of the deposit. It is a brick-red ware, light in weight and made of highly micaceous clay. No wash or slip was applied to either surface and there is no evidence of decoration. Only a few rim shreds representing shapes are present and these indicate dishes and bowls with externally projecting ledges.
The third fabric occurs in very small quantities, accounting just for 1.70 percent of the pottery from the trench. This too is known only from the upper half of the deposit. The ware is made of fine well-levigated clay, and is well-fired. The surface as well as core is uniformly of an ochrish colour, and the surface has become rather powdery due to weathering. No decorated shapes are known in this ware.
It must be pointed out that the distinction among the three wares is not always watertight. While the most typical shreds of the wares are markedly different from one another, the least typical ones are different to distinguish from one another.
Colouring material in the form of hematite nodules was found at All levels of the site, though we do not know for what purpose this material was used.
In another trench at Bagor fragmentary human skull bones were found carefully placed below a large stone quern. These, no doubt indicate a secondary burial practice wherein selected bones were interned within the settlement after the dead body had been exposed to let the flesh decompose.
The only other find from the site consists of a socketed iron arrow from the surface. head. This occurred at a depth of 60-65 cm from the surface. Socketed arrow heads are uncommon in India but comparable specimens are known from the Mauryan levels at Kausambi in Uttar Pradesh. If the arrow head is genuinely in situ, then the microliths will have to be dated quite late.
However, certain factors make us hesitate to accept unreservedly at this State that the microliths can be so late at Bagor. First, it should be noted that the site of Bagor lies on the fringe of the Ahar culture province. This culture was based on a well-developed food producing economy and is dated to the early part of the second millennium B.C.
It looks rather odd that purely hunting groups should have survived in the vicinity of agricultural communities for such a long time. Secondly, no other antiquities assignable to early Iron Age or even to the Ahar culture have been found at this site. The site of Bagor is due for full excavation very soon and we might leave the question of its absolute dating open till then.
In western Rajasthan two of the better known sites, namely Sojat and Dhaneri [15], are located near the town of Sojat in Pali district at the southern end of a long chain of limestone outcrops. There are likely to be many more microlithic sites in these hills as the raw material for making tools was plentifully available here in the form of chert, flint, shale, silicified wood and even quartzite.
The only microlithic type known is obliquely blunted blade, but numerous unretouched blades and a variety of scrapers are also present. Midway between Sojat and Pali are two closely situated sites of Jadan and Kanawas [16], the latter being more promising of the two. Here microliths occur plentifully in the fields at the foot of a hill. The tool types include blunted back blades and obliquely blunted points, and there are numerous unretouched blades and scrapers on cores as well as flakes and blades.
Several of the core scrapers from Kanawas are larger in size than those found usually at microlithic sites and in technique are closer to those of the middle stone age. These might perhaps suggest a continuation of the middle Stone Age tradition into the late Stone Age. A few hammer stones with marks of brusing at the periphery were also found at this site.
However, the most significant site so far known in western Rajasthan is that near Tilwara, some 23 kilometers to the west of the town of Balotra in district Barmer.[17] The site is located on a low sand dune in the bend of the Luni where it takes a turn to the south after flowing west for a long distance.
It lies in the ancient bed of the Luni and is about two kilometres away from the present river channel. The surface of the dune is littered with microliths and pottery. An exploratory dig revealed a cultural deposit of 60 cm though stray microlithic chips occurred up to 90 cm. The raw material of the microlithic industry consists of then, quartzite, quartz and rhyolite, all of which were obtained from the rock outcrops a few kilometres away.
The industry consists of blunted back and obliquely blunted blades, lunates, triangles and trapezes besides scrapers and burins. A number of kankar blocks obviously imported to the site from the adjoining river bed occurred in the excavation and were possibly, like the stones at Bagor, connected with some sort of structures at the site. There are also fragmentary pieces of querns made out of kankar blocks suggesting some grinding activity. Besides there are small clay balls.
Animal bones occurred here sparsely but were too small and fragmentary to be useful for identification. Pottery consists of red and grey ware fabrics, but the sherd are even more fragmentary than at Bagor. The suggested shapes are all of small vases. Both the wares are wheel ride and decoration consists of incised parallel lines and punctured designs.
Here two iron pieces were found at about the middle of the occupation deposits. These are simple nails and are typologically of little value in dating the industry. However, it is locally known that the site was occupied, apparently temporarily, in relatively recent times, a phenomenon also suggested by the finding of several fragments glass bangles. This site too is due for excavation soon and we shall wait for more evidence before pronouncing any judgment on the chronological position of this culture.
On the basis of this general survey we might make a few cautious generalizations. Until recently we had only surface evidence of microliths from Rajasthan and for this reason our assessment of its cultural and chronological status was greatly hampered.
With stratigraphical evidence from two sites we are now in a better position to interpret the surface material and reconstruct the late stone age culture, though many more living sites will have to be excavated before a clear picture of this period emerges: What, however, already appears to be certain is that late stone age had far greater cultural diversity that was known during the preceding middle stone age.
At Nimbahera we have an industry using chalcedony to the exclusion of all other materials, and typologically composed of blunted back and obliquely blades and lunates but completely devoid of true geometrics. In the same geographical province we have at Bagor a full-fledged microlithic culture based on a predominately geometric lithic industry, using sophisticated pottery, having grinding and rubbing stones that imply some kind of food preparation, depending entirely, as far as animal food was concerned, on hunting and practising some kind of human burial.
In the western Rajasthan on the other hand, we have microlithic industries, using lunates, straight and obliquely blunted blades, triangles and trapezes. Pottery here is wheel made and different from that found in the eastern region. However, in both areas people appear to have lived in temporary structures made largely of perishable materials but using stone perhaps as support for the foundation and base.
These various industries and cultures over such a vast geographical area must also reflect some chronological differences. With the completion of the projected excavations at Tilwara and Bagor we shall be in a better position to understand these differences.
REFERENCES
[1] IAR, 1956-7, pp. 6, 8; 1959-60, p, 40.
[2] IAR, 1955-6, p. 69; 1956-7, pp. 6, 8; 1957-8, pp. 44-5.
[3] IAR, 1957-8, pp. 44-5; 1958-9, p. 43; 1959-60, p. 40.
[4] IAR. 1958-9, p. 43.
[5] Ibid.
[6] V. N. Misra, and M. Nagar, 1963. “Two Stone Age Sites on the Chambal Rajasthan” BDCRI, Vol. XXII, pp. 156-69; and IAR, 1957-8, p. 69.
[7] IAR, 1955-6, p. 69.
[8] IAR, 1959-60, p. 40; and V.N. Misra, 1961. The Stone Age Cultures of Rajputana, Ph.D. Thesis. Poona University.
[9] IAR, 1956-7, p, 79; 1958-9, p. 74.
[10] 10. Site discovered by Dr. L.S. Leshnik and Dr. V.N. Misra in 1967.
[11] V.N. Misra, 1967. Pre-and Proto-history of the Berach Basin, South Rajasthan. Poona, pp. 104-23.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Misra, 1961. Op. Cit., p. 44 and pp. 207-35.
[14] Site discovered by Dr. V.N. Misra and Dr. L.S. Leshnik in 1967.
[15] Misra, V.N, 1961. Op. Cit, p. 55 and pp. 207-35.
[16] Sites discovered by Dr. V.N. Misra and Dr. L.S. Leshnik in 1967.
[17] Site discovered by Dr. L.S. Leshnik and Dr. V.N. Misra in 1967.
