III

The Mesolithic Horizon and Associated Rock Art

THE CONCEPT OF A MESOLITHIC LEVEL AND ITS DISTRIBUTION

Towards the end of the geological period of Pleistocene and the beginning of the geologically Recent period, and between the hunting-gathering upper palaeolithic and the ‘neolithic’ or a generalized stage marking the beginning of food-production and village-farming economy, the position of the mesolithic as a distinct archaeological level has long been assured in the archaeological literature. This stratigraphic aspect cannot be separated from the concept of the mesolithic. In the Indian situation, on the one hand we would expect this level to be rooted in the preceding upper palaeolithic, and on the other it should be earlier than the first manifestation of the village-farming economy in the regional context. Correspondingly, it should also be possible to ascribe it to a geological context of the late Pleistocene-early Recent or Holocene phase. Thus, while ascribing the ‘mesolithic’ status to the finds of ‘microlithic industry’ anywhere, it is important to consider the chronological aspect.

Microlithic industry is easy to recognize: generally less than 1 to 5 cm long implements made mostly on short parallel-sided blades, taken out cores of crypto-crystalline silica (cf. chert, chalcedony, crystal, jasper, agate, etc.). In addition to the ‘pigmy’ versions of the upper palaeolithic types, such as points, scrapers, burins, awls, etc., we now have lunates or crescents and the so-called geometric shapes of rhomboids, trapezes and trapezoids, and triangles. The presence or absence of the geometric shapes establishes the status of a particular microlithic industry as geometric or non-geometric. As far as the presently available evidence goes, the latter may be earlier than the former in a particular sequence, but geometric type by itself need not be taken as indicative of a late assemblage. In both cases, the tools are too small to be effective as single specimens, although exception may be made in the case of those which could be used as arrowheads and drill-points. They were mostly hafted into handles of wood or bone and formed composite implements, such as saws, sickles, etc Actual specimens of such implements made by hafting microliths in a handle have been found in suitably preserved archaeological situations.

Map 2 Some Important Mesolithic Sites

That the Indian microlithic industry is rooted in the preceding phase of upper palaeolithic industries is proved both by the continuation of the archaeological stratigraphy from the upper palaeolithic into the microlithic and the development of the latter category of tools from the former category. The element of stratigraphic continuity is clear from all areas and localities where a full prehistoric profile from the palaeolithic to the mesolithic is available. The continuity of lithic technology is apparent too, wherever a close study of the lithic assemblages of both the upper palaeolithic and the mesolithic has been made. Patne in the Chalisgaon area of Maharashtra is an excavated site where such a study has been made. Of the five stratigraphically defined phases (‘a’ to ‘e’) of the upper palaeolithic at Patne, the last phase—‘e’—is important from this view-point. The presence of backed, pen-knife and truncated varieties of blades along with lunates, triangles and trapezes in this level clearly foreshadows the development of the full-fledged microlithic industry of the succeeding phase. The excavator of the site, S.A. Sali, emphatically notes the ‘Microlithic character obtained in the Late Upper Palaeolithic’. It may also be noted that there is a radiocarbon date of 23,050 ± 200 BC from the preceding phase ‘d’ of the upper palaeolithic and thus the upper palaeolithic phase ‘e’ which contains distinctly microlithic tool-types undoubtedly belongs to the end Pleistocene.¹ Again, the situation is hardly unique. There is a consistent series of radiocarbon dates between c. 26,000 BC and c. 9,500 BC for geometric microliths at the site of Batadomba–Lena in the area to the west of the central highland zone of Sri Lanka. Another area in the subcontinent where a case may be made for the end Pleistocene date of microlithic tool-types is near Tuticorin in the extreme south-east. Here a series of microlithic tool-types (backed blades, obliquely blunted blades, scrapers, triangles, points (including bifacial points of a type found also in Sri Lanka), lunates, etc. were found associated with red sand dunes which are locally known as teris. This industry is thus known as teri industry. According to Rita Gardner, who made a geomorphological study of the fossilized sand deposits of this area, the teri sands were ‘weathered in the very Late Pleistocene and Early to Mid-Holocene’.² Although Gardner is of the opinion that the microliths here only post-date dune formation and ‘are coincident with dune weathering’, the position is by no means settled. For instance, K.V. Soundara Rajan writes that ‘the implements, heavily stained with red hydrated ferric oxide, seemingly came from within the weathered sand of the original soil sections and are therefore likely to be older than the teri accummulation, certainly older than the red weathering’. More work in this area is certainly necessary. Further, it is important to refer to the level 6 (from the bottom) of ‘lithostratigraphic sequence’ in the middle Belan valley, studied by Williams and Clarke: ‘brown and yellow-brown calcareous clay loam and sandy clays … Upper Palaeolithic to Epi-Palaeolithic and (?) Mesolithic artefacts. Age late Upper Pleistocene (c. 25 to c. 10 kyr BP)’.³ The epi-palaeolithic level of this area, as defined by G.R. Sharma and others at Chopani Mando, contains an industry of backed blades, parallel-sided blades, burins, points, scrapers, cores, flakes and blanks which are smaller than the same type of upper palaeolithic artefacts but longer, thicker and broader than the true mesolithic artefacts. In the Belan valley the emergence of microliths towards the end Pleistocene is a clear possibility.

If the picture of the earliest emergence of microliths in India is slowly falling into place, there is no such clarity about their last limits. They certainly occur widely till the early Iron Age levels, which is not an uncommon situation even in Iron Age England. In certain areas, however, the use of microliths could have continued till the early medieval context. The early historic level of Dihar in Bankura, West Bengal, supposedly contains microliths made of bottle glass and in the same region lithic specimens have been found in association with c. tenth to twelfth century ADpottery. The tradition of making microliths out of bottle glass has been documented in the Andaman Islands in the nineteenth century. In fact, undated microlithic contexts in India do not denote a mesolithic phase. Myriads of surface clusters of microliths in the subcontinent are undated and thus cannot be put in a specifically mesolithic context. It is for this reason that a recent reviewer has written that ‘normative views of “the Mesolithic” as a distinct phase of South Asian culture history be critically examined—and possibly abandoned.’⁴ We do not propose to abandon the phase but also do not propose to use it as a holdall in which chronologically uncertain evidence of microliths and evidently copper and iron related evidence of these tools can all be put together with those sites which fall indisputably towards the end of the Pleistocene and in the early part of the Holocene or Recent. Our emphasis will only be on the chronologically secure or at least probable ‘early’ evidence.

Although the distribution of early, truly mesolithic evidence in India is still limited, the distribution of microlithic sites is not; in fact, it is easier to note the areas without microliths than those with them. Except in a limited section of the Ganga plain, i.e. part of a strip between Pratapgarh and Banaras, microliths are not yet known to occur elsewhere in the Indo-Gangetic plain. The hilly areas of the north-east too have not yet revealed any categorical proof of the existence of this industry. Otherwise, microliths are more ubiquitous than palaeoliths in the sense that they are far more visible in the landscape. One comes across whole tracts full of microlithic scatters. It is mainly in the context of his microlithic finds in central India, eastern Vindhyas and near Banaras that Carlleyle wrote:

The question now, therefore, is not—‘where are stone implements to be found?’ but rather—‘where are they not to be found?’ For, as far as my own experience goes, they appear findable almost eveywhere in India. …⁵

The modern population explosion has, however, destroyed many microlithic clusters in many areas of the subcontinent.

Climate

The picture of climate at the end of the Pleistocene and the beginning of the Holocene is, despite claims to the contrary, not uniform all over the subcontinent. If we begin with the area near Santiniketan in West Bengal, we find that the trend was towards comparative dryness and semi-aridity. On the basis of the mechanical analysis of fine particles, microscopic examination of sand-grains and chemical analysis of the relevant soil samples from the excavated site of Birbhanpur at Durgapur in West Bengal, Dr B.B. Lal, the chief archaeological chemist of the Archaeological Survey of India, noted that the pre-microlithic and non-implementiferous layers of this site ‘were produced under conditions of large quantities of moisture and a high mean annual rainfall with a downward percolation of water’, whereas the microlith-bearing layer marked a comparatively dry period with increased wind activity. The climate ‘tended more and more towards semi-aridity’ in the post-microlithic period. On the basis of his work at Paruldanga in Santiniketan, the present author may further claim that microliths are found not merely on the surface of the earlier deposit of lateritic conglomerate which has yielded lower to upper palaeolithic tools in its main profile elsewhere in West Bengal but also within the sandy deposit which covers the lateritic conglomerate deposit. Even without being a geomorphologist one can infer that this sandy deposit could have been lain in that area by strong winds in an arid or semi-arid phase.⁶

The picture obtained from the coastal dunes of the eastern coast of Andhra and Tamil Nadu is still uncertain. The deposition of these dunes over 25 km or so away from the present coastline occurred, according to Rita Gardner, towards the end of the Pleistocene and denoted ‘the existence of significantly more arid conditions than at present’. However, according to her, the weathering of these dunes, which gave them their red colour, suggests ‘the re-establishment and strengthening of the monsoon circulation during the Early to Mid-Holocene and the associated wetter conditions’. We have noticed that a different assessment of the position of the teri microliths puts them before the weathering stage, and from this point of view, the microlith-related phase of the dunes fell into the phase of arid conditions.

In the Didwana sector of western Rajasthan, the hypothesis of aridity during the terminal Pleistocene and greater rainfall in early Holocene has been put forward with great vigour. The detailed geochemical studies of the Didwana salt lake sediments and the study of their pollen deposits have been taken to suggest that ‘towards the end of the Pleistocene the lake was carrying water only intermittently and depositing sandy sediments’. From 6000–4000 BP ‘the lake was almost perennially full suggesting a marked increase in rainfall’. If this interpretation of the relevant scientific research by Misra is correct, we do not have increased rainfall in this region before c. 4000 BC. The Holocene or Recent stage is supposed to have begun around 10,000 BP /8000 BC, and thus the onset of the Holocene in western Rajasthan cannot really be taken to be anything other than a phase of aridity. However, nothing in the area of palaeoenvironmental studies seems to be a cut-and-dried affair, as V.M. Meher-Homji’s table of ‘chronological sequence of aridity and humidity in Rajasthan’ seems to demonstrate. To a large extent this table is based on the reconstruction of pollen profiles of the Salt Lakes of western Rajasthan by Gurdeep Singh and his associates, and for the earlier portion it depends on the premises put forward by Bridget Allchin and others.⁷

This profile no doubt suggests aridity towards the end of the Pleistocene but the beginning of Holocene here is marked by a moist phase, although for only 500 years. One has also to note that on the basis of his later palynological work in the Didwana lake Gurdeep Singh added more precision to this sequence.

Archaeologically, these profiles from western Rajasthan are significant mainly because of two reasons: the inference of a wetter condition as compared to the earlier conditions towards the end of the Pleistocene and the beginning of the Holocene, and the premise of a wet, sub-humid condition during the period which broadly coincides with the Indus civilization and-related sites. We shall examine the second premise in a later chapter. Meanwhile, we note that there is no specific hypothesis of aridity in the beginning of the Holocene in western Rajasthan. This is what is relevant to our present discussion.

Williams and Clarke, who have studied the Quaternary sequence in eastern Madhya Pradesh, subscribe to the opinion that ‘the Early to Middle Holocene climate of India was generally wet and warm, with heavy monsoonal rain in summer and moderate rain in winter. By about 4–3 kyr BPthe Late Holocene desiccation of northern India was under way, aggravated by the impact of Neolithic herding, land clearance and cultivation.’ In their overview of ‘marine sediments and palaeoclimatic variations since the Late Pleistocene’ in the Arabian Sea region of the subcontinent, R. Nigam and N.H. Hashimi report that the sediment characteristics on the western sheif of India and their mineralogical parameters indicate climatic aridity around 11 kyr BP (i.e. about 9000 BC) and that ‘the climate changed from warm and arid to warm and humid around 10 kyr ago’, accompanied by the intensification of the monsoon. Better monsoon conditions have been inferred to have existed prior to 3.5 kyr BP in the central Western Ghats where there was a reduction in evergreen, deciduous and mangrove forests and a corresponding increase in the savannah grasslands. However, as C. Caratini, who did the concerned palynological study, and Meher-Homji point out, this vegetational change could also occur due to human interference in the vegetation and need not be the result of any basic climatic change.⁹

Thus, the story of climate in the early Holocene and Holocene in general in the Indian subcontinent is not particularly well understood beyond some stray patches of scientific research. As far as the early mesolithic evidence is concerned, there does not seem to be any special reason to believe that the corresponding landscape was much more wet and wooded than what used to be the case over a large part of India before the population explosion and the consequent denudation of vegetation within the last hundred years. As Nigam and Hashimi point out, ‘the reconstruction of palaeoclimatic variation over the Indian region during the last few thousand years is still in its infancy.’ Attempts to understand the history of the geologically Recent Phase of India in terms of ill-established hypotheses of minor climatic oscillations display no doubt enthusiasm on the part of the authors of such attempts to take environmental factors into consideration to explain cultural changes, but regrettably, very little else.

Chronology

Unfortunately, the number of early mesolithic dates from India is woefully limited and confined to a handful of sites. This amply indicates the limited amount of research which has been carried out on this phase of Indian history.

If one studies the following list of early mesolithic dates, one may justifiably put the first phase of the Indian mesolithic between 10,000+ BC and c. 5,000–4,000 BC. There is some consistency in this spread of dates in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. There are also many late dates from other apparently mesolithic contexts. For instance, the Lekhahia rock-shelter in the eastern Vindhyas has three seventeenth century AD dates from the phase 4 of its mesolithic occupation. (However, more recent [unpublished] dates from the site show an early spread.) Either these dates are based on contaminated samples or indicative of a very late continuation of the use of microlithic tools in this area. In the present context we have ignored such dates and also the third to fourth millennia BC dates from the metal-bearing but otherwise mesolithic levels of such sites as Langhnaj in north Gujarat and Bagor in Rajasthan.

Here we are concerned only with the earliest evidence of mesolithic economy in the subcontinent and not with its continuation. However, as we go through the cultural evidence in the next section, we shall have to wonder if at places such as Bagor and Adamgarh we have a pristine mesolithic economy or something different.