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The Neolithic Stone Industry of the North Karnataka Region

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

F.R. Allchin
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Extract

Neolithic sites of the North Karnataka region produce artifacts belonging to two distinct industries.1 The first comprises mainly blade and ‘geometric’ tools manufactured from a series of siliceous rocks. Their manufacture entails a definite tradition of core preparation and striking of bladeflakes.2 The second industry comprises core and flake tools manufactured from a group of igneous and metamorphic rocks. Their manufacture entails different techniques based upon flaking, grinding, and pecking. The artifacts to be studied here belong to the second industry.

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Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , June 1957 , pp. 321 - 335
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1957

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References

page 321 note 1 Foote, R. Bruce, Indian prehistoric and protohistoric antiquities, Madras, 1916, 82–7.Google Scholar The correctness of many of Foote's inferences has since been shown by Wheeler's excavations at Brahmagiri, see Ancient India, iv, 1948, 18 ff.Google Scholar

page 321 note 2 cf. my thesis, The development of early cultures in the Saichur District of Hyderabad (University of London Ph.D. thesis), 1954, 378–9.Google Scholar The use of the word ‘industry’ in this paper is not quite that which is current in much archaeological writing (for example, Burkitt, M.C., The Old Stone Age, Cambridge, 1933, 11).Google Scholar I shall use the term for describing the products of systematic work or labour when technological features indicate that a range of artifacts belong to a single craft tradition. The techniques of core preparation, etc., are closely related to those which Subbarao has fully described in a recent paper on the ‘Chalcolithic blade industry from Maheshvar’, BDCBI, XVII, 1955–1956, 126 ff.Google Scholar

page 321 note 3 loc. cit., 17–24.

page 321 note 4 Worman, E.C., Jr., ‘The “neolithic” problem in the prehistory of India’, Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences, xxxix, 1949, 181–201Google Scholar, and Subbarao, B., Stone Age cultures of Bellary, Poona, 1948.Google Scholar

page 322 note 1 Hubert Knox, I.C.S., became interested in the antiquities of the district whilst he held the Judgeship of Bellary. Both he and Henry Gompertz, of the Madras Survey, made their collections in the eighties and nineties and both gave some of their specimens to Bruce Foote. Their collections were presented to the British Museum in 1893 and 1886 respectively. I have no information regarding W. E. Jardine except that his British Museum collection was also presented in 1893 and that there is another collection of ground stone tools, bearing his name and probably from a southern site, in the Indian Section of the Victoria and Albert Museum. Mr. F. J. Richards was formerly of the I.C.S. and later Honorary Lecturer in Indian Archaeology in this university. His collection was made in the years 1913–4. I should like to take this opportunity of recording the considerable debt I owe him.

page 322 note 2 loc. cit., 17–18.

page 326 note 1 It is surprisingly difficult to substantiate this apparently simple statement at present. I hope that this paper and subsequent studies of other Indian collections will pave the way for a review the evidence. The opposing arguments of Worman, and others, are not very convincing, and it seems necessary to consider the problem in more general cultural terms.

page 326 note 2 McCarthy, F.D., Records of the Australian Museum, XXII, 1949, 162.Google Scholar

page 326 note 3 Spencer, W.B. and Gillen, F.J., Across Australia, 1912, 368.Google Scholar

page 327 note 1 More definite evidence of hafting is available from Central India, .and I shall consider it together with the ethnographic and other evidence in a later paper.

page 328 note 1 It would be interesting to compare these figures with those of other sufficiently large collections.

page 328 note 2 loc. cit., 21.

page 328 note 3 cf. F. J. Richards, manuscript ‘Notes on the Bellary neoliths’, in the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford. I am indebted to Mr. T. K. Penniman for his kind assistance and for permitting me to use the notes.

page 329 note 1 loc. cit., 183–6.

page 329 note 2 loc. cit., 31–6.

page 332 note 1 loc. cit., Pl. xxi, no. 7.

page 332 note 2 loc. cit., Pl. XX, no. 9.

page 332 note 3 The stone wedge is employed by modern primitives for wood splitting. Its use in Australia commented on by McCarthy in Records of the, Australian Museum, xxi, 1947, 427–9.Google Scholar

page 333 note 1 loc. cit., Pl. XXIII, nos. 7–9. Nos. 11 and 12 of this plate would be classed as borers by me.

page 333 note 2 Ibid.

page 333 note 3 Similar tools are known from many parts of the world. Their use in boring stone mace heads is illustrated and described from New Guinea by Blackwood, B., The technology of a modern Stone Age people in New Guinea, Oxford, 1950, PI. VIII C and E.Google Scholar

page 334 note 1 Sir Marshall, J., Taxila, Cambridge, 1951, 509–11.Google Scholar The comparison is in form and technique of manufacture. It in no way implies that they are of comparable age.

page 334 note 2 loc. cit., Pl 48, no. 2034 A.

page 334 note 3 Ibid., Pls. 7 and 8.

page 335 note 1 loc. cit., 85–6.

page 335 note 2 loc. cit., 41.