The issues of Indian protohistory and early history have a different dimension, and here we may briefly allude to the themes of settlements, agriculture, metallurgy and trade, mainly dwelling on their diversities and continuities. As units of study, settlements provide perhaps greater insight into the long-term geographical and historical forces than anything else. A reasonable idea of ancient land use may be obtained simply by taking note of their exact location and the types of land which were available to them for exploitation by means of pre-industrial agricultural technology. For instance, many black-and-red ware sites of West Bengal are found to be located near marshy depressions which are likely to retain water or moisture for a greater part of the year. Rice was the main crop and one is perhaps justified in inferring that rice cultivated in West Bengal during this period included a variety which resembled the modern boro rice (sown in seed-beds and transplanted in December/January on the soft clayey soil of the river banks or margins of marshy lands). In the case of a black-and-red ware site in Bihar, which is not far from the bank of the Ganga near Kahalgaon, it is likely that the cultivators of the period took advantage of the char lands (river islands) both for winter pulses and vegetables and grazing cattle. It is an important feature of the economic activity of the area now, and because the modern village and the black-and-red ware settlement are located at the same spot, there is no reason why the ancient economic behaviour had to be different. Another possible significance of ancient settlement studies in the subcontinent is that it is likely to lead to a more precise definition of ancient territorial units mentioned in literature. For the north Bihar plains we have four geographical names in ancient literature and other evidence: Videha, Mithila, Vajji, and Tirabhukti. The geographical meaning of these terms has been discussed by many scholars. Our study of the distribution of sites in this region suggests that ‘the archaeological core of north Bihar seems to lie in its central north-south segment, roughly between the Sitamarhi–Vaisali–Ganga/Gandak line on the west and the Saharsa–Khagaria line on the east’, and that the geographical identities suggested by these terms were broadly the same.2Angaand Magadha are two neighbouring and ancient political units, and although their broad geographical definitions have long been understood (Anga: the modern Bhagalpur area; Magadha: south Bihar), the demarcation line between them is less defined. The distribution of sites in the region underscores the significance of the Kiul river in this connection.3 Perhaps the most significant need in this area of study is to establish a detailed picture of settlement diversity area by area. Modern settlements vary widely in their functions and characters. There is no reason why the ancient picture should be different. But somehow, not enough attention has been paid to this issue. On a preliminary level, it should easily be possible to differentiate agricultural and/or trading settlements from those which came up mainly as resource–procurement centres. Most of the major settlements were, of course, likely to have combined different functions. Mohenjodaro was no doubt a major political, craft and trade centre of the period; at the same time we have suggested that its role could also have been a bit like that of Shikarpur in the early nineteenth century. Shikarpur, located at the mouth of the Kachchi plain on the Indus side and thus on a line of communication between the Kachchi plain and the Indus river, received the trade coming through the Bolan pass and played an important role in the economic life of Afghanistan and central Asia. Mohenjodaro is on the bank of the Indus and easily connected with the Shikarpur area; it could have played a similar role in its own time. In a different context, Sohgaura located at the confluence of the Ami and Rapti in the Gorakhpur region is known to have been a Mauryan administrative centre. Its location suggests that it lies in the midst of a singularly rich agricultural area, and perhaps it was this factor which led to its selection as a lesser centre of Mauryan administration. Ancient Rajgir is located in an area from which the Hazaribagh sector of the Chhotanagpur plateau is easily accessed through the Nawadah plateau. It is also known that Rajgir was the Gangetic valley terminal point of the Rajgir–Paithan route, one of the early recorded historic trade routes from the Gangetic valley (Rajgir) to the Deccan (Paithan). In view of the geographical location of Rajgir showing an easy access to the Chhotanagpur plateau, it is probable that the raw material resources of this plateau were part of the early historic Gangetic valley–Deccan trade through Rajgir. In fact, at the edge of the plateau to the south of Rajgir, there are two major early sites: Devangarh (a walled early historic city—unexcavated) and Fatehgarh, which is supposed to have a sequence from the neolithic/black-and-red ware stage upwards. It is through simple geographical studies of this kind that the settlement maps of different stages of protohistoric and early historic India can acquire an element of historical realism.
Another issue which still remains partly neglected is that of settlement continuity at the same spot or in the same village area from the protohistoric period onwards. With some exceptions, this is the general picture in West Bengal and a large part of the Ganga plain. However, the regional pictures have to be studied closely in order to identify the main turning points of settlement history in different parts of the subcontinent. The very fact of continuity of village occupation from protohistory to the modern period at a large number of places demonstrates that the protohistoric villages closely adapted to the landscape and the agricultural possibilities it offered. Finally, although an increase in the density of sites through time is a common feature in many of the areas where detailed surveys have been undertaken, this need not be taken as axiomatic. On the basis of an unpublished survey in the Peshawar plain in the north-west one may state that it was during the Kushana rule of the early centuries AD that the ancient settlement density of the region was at its peak. There was a fall in the number of sites after that period. Considering that under the Kushanas the area was a part of a political rule extending up to central Asia and witnessed intense trading activities along well-defined routes across the Hindukush and the Karakoram, this is easily understandable. It would be interesting if the long-term settlement history of a region can be studied with reference to its political and economic variables. Certain broad generalizations have already been made in this regard. As noted earlier, the history of urban settlement growth in India can be neatly correlated to three major phases of Indian political history: the seventh/sixth–fifth century AD, the third–second century BC and the early centuries AD. We would also draw attention to another point. The way ancient settlements expanded and eventually came to cover—thinly or thickly—different sections of a region may constitute an important part of the study of long-term settlement history. It is well known that in the Bhagirathi delta of West Bengal ancient settlements continued to flourish along an old course of the river till the twelfth–thirteenth centuries AD and perhaps a little later. But what is interesting is that this was a part of a long process beginning in the third century BC and earlier, and although there is no lack of early sites along this deserted channel to the south of Calcutta, the region as a whole, inclusive of parts of the modern Sundarbans, was penetrated by settlements only in the twelfth–thirteenth century AD. It would, in fact, be important to know the different processes and stages through which settlements grew in the major habitational areas of the subcontinent.