Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c10.26

c10.26

The classification of the prehistoric cultures of Mesopotamia, with which we must begin, is made by using convenient *type-site* names for the various phases, so that, for instance, Uruk is not only a place (the Biblical Erech and the modern Arab Warka) but it can be used when talking of the ‘Uruk Culture’ - that is, the various types of architecture, pottery, tools, sculpture, and so on made by a certain group of people at a certain time - and we can also say that another culture is of ‘Uruk date’: that is, contemporary with the place the Uruk Culture holds in the whole Mesopotamian sequence. This is a fundamental method of archaeological terminology, and we shall use it similarly in describing the Indian cultures; with it there goes the system of numbering successive strata in a site or tell of many periods of occupation. Here the normal and most rational practice is to reverse the actual sequence of excavation, in which of course the topmost (and latest) occupation is dug into first, and number from the earliest settlement to the latest.