Prehistoric research in the subcontinent suffers from a very serious contrast between the abundance of prehistoric artefacts on the one hand and the lack of chronological, cultural and environmental information on the other. However, a number of important developments have taken place in recent years. The first is certainly the two-million-year-old dating of artefacts from Riwat, which is indirectly supported by Indian geologists’ earlier claim of lower Pleistocene dates for lower paleolithic tools in the Siwaliks and Ladakh. This early dating has opened up interesting fields of study, one of which is the stagewise reconstruction of the lower palaeolithic development in the subcontinent, especially the gap between the beginning and the emergence of the Acheulian industries in various areas, some of which, as we now know, can date from 0.5 million years ago or earlier (cf. Dina and Jalalpur). In a sense this problem affects the middle and upper palaeolithic studies too. The middle palaeolithic in western Rajasthan is as early as 144000/150000 years BP, whereas in the Hiran valley of Saurashtra it is only 56,800 years BP. The upper palaeolithic in the north-west dates from 45,000 years BP and later, but in other areas it can be several thousand years later. This is nothing unusual, but the chronological differential between different types of sites in different areas has to be understood in order to obtain a better idea of how the palaeolithic stages developed in the subcontinent. In one way, a better chronological frame should also help to assess the place of the subcontinent in the scheme of human evolution. Even if one decides to ignore the issue of the presence or absence of Homo erectus in south Asia, one has to face the problem of the emergence of modern humans. This issue has gained some urgency in the context of the identification of Archaic Homo sapiens at Hathnora.
The second major development in the field of Indian palaeolithic studies is the beginning of palaeoclimatic research. In spite of what has been achieved, especially in Kashmir, Rajasthan, Gujarat and the upper Son valley, research in many of these areas is qualitatively uneven. Multi-faceted lines of investigation were pursued only in Kashmir, and even there the climatic sequence could not be related to the archaeological succession earlier than the upper palaeolithic. What has been obtained in other areas is perhaps no more than a range of possibilities. The way in which the pollen sequence of the salt lakes of western Rajasthan has been taken as a catch-all of the climatic inferences over a large area does not seem to be particularly edifying.
The third major development in this context is the general adoption of a settlement-subsistence approach. The distribution and character of lithic sites in the context of the various food-collecting activities pursued by modern villagers and tribals of the area, gives an insight into the possible ways of food collection from the same landscape by prehistoric hunter-gatherers. We have noticed that this approach has been successfully applied in some areas. Two points may be noted in connection with this type of research. First, it might be more useful to have a picture of year-long food-collecting activities by the relevant modern groups, so that the details of the whole range of this behaviour are available. Second, it is possible that the distribution of lithic scatters that is being considered in a study area may cover not merely an extremely long chronological spectrum but also fall outside one’s focus of a particular ‘age’. For instance, there is no assurance that the microlithic scatters that may be found in a survey area belong to a ‘mesolithic age’. For all one knows, these scatters may cover the whole chronological span from the mesolithic to the Iron Age and even later. The settlement-subsistence approach can give an idea of only a general range of possible food-collecting behaviour in the landscape. It cannot bypass the issues of geo-archaeology and chronology.
The fourth major development in the field, in fact, touches the geo-archaeological and chronological issues. Whereas absolute chronology depends on finding suitable samples for dating, geo-archaeological studies in India have to a large extent suffered because of lack of trained personnel and inadequate laboratory facilities.
The fifth such development has been in the area of typological-technological studies. On the whole there is a greater emphasis on the study of stone tools in the context of a wide range of attributes and their quantitative analysis. This should lead to a better comparison between industries of different areas. Another type of useful study in the same context is that of inter-site variability of artefacts. The experimental lithic studies have not made any headway in India, not least in the context of prehistory.
The lack of prehistoric settlement sites continues to be a serious problem in the study of Indian prehistory. It is possible that people did not spend nights in the areas of tool manufacture; they could have put up elsewhere strictly temporary and open-air shelters, the remains of which would have been washed away in the next monsoon. Still, the extensive occurrences of artefacts should be subjected to traditional excavation. As things stand, very few of such occurrences have been excavated. This is more true of the very large spreads of upper palaeolithic tools in various areas. The increased richness of upper palaeolithic assemblages, which is significant from the point of view of later prehistory, has not yet been adequately investigated in the subcontinent.
Although the mesolithic situation is better understood, the early mesolithic evidence is still scanty, considering the size of the subcontinent and the richness of its microlithic scatters. In any case, the relationship between the early mesolithic and the mesolithic of the type at Bagor (the first phase) and Adamgarh still remains to be worked out. Among other things, the possible contribution of the mesolithic tradition to the beginning of settlements in some river valleys, including the Ganga valley, continues to remain obscure. One would like to know, for instance, what happened to the tradition established by such sites as Sarai Nahar Rai and Mahadaha in that particular area of the Ganga valley. In the case of the microlithic scatters it is easier to comment on the transport of raw materials or on their localization according to the local natural features. For instance, a recent survey of microlithic sites in the Tarafeni valley of West Bengal has noted a ‘high density of sites’ in an area where ‘Outcrops of black chert, cherty quartz, varieties of coloured chert, quartzite, chalcedony, grey chert and meta basalt that have been used in various quantities are absent.’ Further, after the stage of initial trimming, cores were carried around and worked at various places.1 As long as the contemporaneity of such microlithic clusters in a given area (in this particular area the present author found some microlithic clusters with one or two neoliths) is not emphasized, this kind of analysis opens up a possible range of behaviour among the hunting-gathering communities of this stage. The microlith-using communities certainly moved around and could have played a role in defining the regional lines of movement. This idea occurred to the present author after observing the distribution of microlith-using painted rock-shelters in the eastern Vindhyas. This distribution is neatly aligned to the route going out of the Banaras–Mirzapur area towards central India and the Deccan.