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Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c11: Chapter IV: Bronze Age Peasant Communities of Western India

Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c11

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Chapter IV: Bronze Age Peasant Communities of Western India

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... through the stones the lizard and the snake
Rustle their brittle length ...
Scavenger kites hang waiting for the dead
Over the old and solitary ram,
And the mule picks its way up the dried river-bed.
(V. Sackville-West, *The Land*)

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THE regions of Western India which comprise Baluchistan, the Makran and Sind are today forbidding, barren mountains, arid desert and sandy waste. But through them, on the eastern boundary of the region, the River Indus, controlled by the Sukkur Barrage and its attendant irrigation canals, brings a strip of rich alluvial lands. The Makran coast stretches eastwards from the Persian border at Gwatar for over three hundred miles of uninviting sandhills and mangrove swamps at the mouths of shallow, turgid streams, while behind the narrow coastal plain the mountains rise stony and bare in fantastic eroded sky-lines like a lunar landscape. Inland, as the massif builds up northwards, it runs in irregular ridges which rise above the 7,000-feet contour: the intervening river valleys, such as those of the Mashkai, the Nal or the Hab Rivers, are isolated one from another, and east-to-west communication must follow the regular routes, which take advantage of the ‘laks’ or passes across the ranges, or, gaining the valleys of the rivers running eastward into Sind, follow the courses of the Mula or the Gaj obliquely to the plain below.

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Around Kalat the mountains narrow to less than a hundred miles from east to west – from the desert of Upper Sind around Jacobabad to the high plateau above the 3,000-feet contour stretching from beyond the Pishin Lora River to Sistan and the Helmund Oasis - and the peaks rise to over 10,000 feet at Koh-i-Maran. The modern Quetta, an oriental Camberley, sprawls unlovely by the side of the ancient caravan town at the head of the great Bolan Pass, linking Kandahar to the Indian Plains; a wide, fertile valley between the mountains where in spring the fruit-blossom rivals in its brightness the snows still lingering on the heights.

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Even with its modern irrigation the Sind Desert remains repellent and inhospitable beyond the limits of the artificial waterways. The ever-shifting mouths of the Indus lose themselves in a wilderness of lagoons and mangrove-swamps, while 20 miles inland old shore-lines can be recognized, with cliffs and promontories looking out over a desert of long-dried mud. Behind Karachi the foothills of the Kirthar Range rise stonily from the sand, and hot springs in the little valleys give rise to unexpected secret oases of lush tropical vegetation.

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Northward, in the dreary country around Larkana, the soil is so impregnated with salt that, drying in the summer heat that rises to 120° in the shade, it has a brittle shining crust that crushes beneath the step like a satanic mockery of snow. The whole landscape is whitened, and forms a dead background to the ugly stunted trees and grey-green bushes that stud the plain.

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It is in these mountainous and desert areas that the earliest agricultural communities yet known in India have been identified. Human settlement in the region is likely to go back at least to the beginning of the third millennium B.C., and shows from the beginning significant links with the ancient Bronze Age cultures of the regions farther west. The abundant evidence of ancient occupation in the Baluchi hills or the Indus plain implies less exacting climatic conditions in the past than at present, and, though historical evidence implies that by the time of Alexander conditions in Baluchistan approximated to those of today, yet we shall see in the next chapter that there is good evidence for a heavier rainfall, and extensive forests, in the Indus Valley in ancient times. The very fact that kiln-burnt bricks were used so lavishly in the Harappā culture shows that almost unlimited timber must have been available for fuel in the third millennium B.C. A westward extension of the monsoon rains by a comparatively small amount could entirely change the character of this western Indian region.

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It is less easy to find evidence of the former climate of Baluchistan than it is for the Indus Valley. Today the territories of the Makran, Kharan, and Jhalawan in South Baluchistan, which contain a large number of prehistoric settlements, are very sparsely populated (not more than two persons to the square mile in Kharan), and this population is partly migratory. The settlements which will form the subject of this chapter are, as will be seen, today represented by ‘tells’ of accumulated debris which can result only from settled communities continuously inhabiting one site for centuries. In the Kolwa region such settlements are particularly numerous, and today this tract is (to quote Stein) ‘by far the greatest dry-crop area of Makran, and its export of barley to other parts in years of good rainfall is considerable. Yet,’ he goes on to say, ‘how rare such rainfall is, and how precarious this cultivation in Kolwa, is shown by the very scanty population of the tract being practically all nomadic.’ This nomadism or seasonal migration is under the present conditions a marked feature throughout Baluchistan, and again one cannot do better than to describe it in Stein’s words:

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‘In consequence of the uncertainties besetting agriculture on all unirrigated land a very considerable portion of the land-owning or tenant population is accustomed to

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move annually for the winter months to the plains of Sind ... in search of employment. They thus avoid also the cutting cold of the winds which sweep down from the higher valleys at that season. But in the spring when the great heat of the Indus valley begins to make itself felt, they all return with their families and with such savings as there are invested in foodstuffs. But for this seasonal migration a succession of unfavourable years such as is fairly frequent would be marked by famine conditions, besides causing whole areas of cultivation to relapse into the appearance of a bare clay desert.’

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It is clear that such seasonal migration is hardly compatible with the formation of ‘tells’ which may rise to a hundred feet and more above the surrounding countryside, in impressive witness of long-enduring continuous settlement. In the prehistoric past the population must have been enabled, by successful agriculture, to live in some prosperity in those same valleys which today support only the most scanty and nomadic human occupation under wretched conditions.

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In his explorations in Baluchistan these problems of climate and population were, of course, much before Sir Aurel Stein’s eyes, and he was able to identify a large series of artificial stone-built dams and terraces, known locally in Jhalawan as gabarbands, clearly designed to aid the irrigation of fields. The date of these is unknown, but, as Stein remarks, they must reflect not only climatic conditions with a greater rainfall, but also a large population to provide the necessary labour for their construction. In the Mashkai Valley a particularly well-preserved pair of massive, stone-faced dams were found, 16 yards apart and designed to contain and guide flood-water coming from the hills above; and these were associated with terraced fields. Near the Lakorian Pass, farther to the north, a most impressive irrigation work was found which was in fact a huge barrage, still standing up to 12 feet high, and having a total length of 348 yards, constructed in such a way as to impound a considerable reservoir of water behind it. The dam had a well-built stone facing containing blocks up to 4 by 3 by 2½ feet in size, and was backed by an earthen ramp. Even though the age and culture of these works are still unknown, their presence is important in indicating greater rainfall in antiquity, and it is by no means improbable that they do, in fact, date back to the prehistoric occupation of the Baluchi Hills.

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In Sind, even if the rainfall was heavier in prehistoric times, cultivation must have depended to a large extent on irrigation works connected with the Indus. At the present day there is an annual increase in the flow of the river in spring, owing to the melting of the winter snows in the Himalayas, where the river rises. This would have caused an annual inundation in primitive conditions, comparable to but less equable and dependable than that of the Nile and more comparable with the Tigris-Euphrates floods. And under these primitive conditions it is important to remember that there are only two really fixed points in the course of the river in Sind - at Sukkur and at Kotri, where it cuts through hard limestone instead of soft soils. Between these points, where the channel cannot vary its position, the Indus would, under natural conditions, without man-made embankments, tend to alter its course yearly, after every successive inundation. There is indeed abundant evidence from the sites of the Harappā Culture that such alteration of course, with consequent disastrous floods, was not uncommon in ancient times.

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Before leaving the geographical background and turning to an examination of the prehistoric cultures themselves, attention must be drawn to Lake Manchhar, which lies between the Indus and the foothills of the Kirthar Range of the Baluchi mountains near Johi. This is normally a lake about 8 to 10 miles in length, and as much in breadth, but being connected with the Indus and also receiving drainage from the hills to the west, in the inundation period it becomes enormously swollen, occupying an area of some 200

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[Figure: BRONZE AGE SETTLEMENT SITES IN WESTERN INDIA O QUETTA WARE ■ ZHOB CULTURES ● AMRI CULTURE ▲ KULLI CULTURE ◎ NAL-NUNDARA ⬙ SHAHI-TUMP CULTURE CULTURE LAND OVER 4000 FEET STIPPLED 0 50 100 150 MILES]

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FIG. 2

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square miles, though nowhere more than 10 feet deep. Majumdar’s field-work in Sind revealed a number of prehistoric sites around the edge of Lake Manchhar, some now islanded at ‘high-water’, though near the edge of the maximum extent of flooding. To the Manchhar region lead two of the most important routes from Baluchistan in use today - the more northerly, through the Mula Pass and down the course of that river, turns south along the edge of the foothills and runs to Johi and the Manchhar region, while the southern route comes from the Mashkai and Nal valleys over the Lak Phusi and the Lak Rohel, entering Sind at Pandi Wahi, near Johi. In addition to these two routes there is clear evidence of traffic down the valley of the Gaj River to the same region in prehistoric times.

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As we have seen in the preceding chapter, it has been possible to make a broad classification of the prehistoric cultures in Persia on the grounds of the techniques employed in pottery-painting - in the south Buff-ware and in the north Red-ware. In Baluchistan we can observe a similar distinction, with Buff Wares in the south and Red Wares in the north. In addition, models of human figures in clay, known from both north and south, differ in character. Within the Buff-ware province of South Baluchistan and Sind other subdivisions must, I think, be made, and using names taken from sites where the culture can be well identified, we can then make a scheme of grouping as follows (Fig. 2):

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A. *Buff-ware Cultures.*
1. *The Quetta Culture* (from sites in the Bolan Pass).
2. *The Amri-Nal Culture* (from two sites, the first in Sind, the second at the head of the Nal Valley in Baluchistan).
3. *The Kulli Culture* (from a site in Kolwa in South Baluchistan).

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B. *Red-ware Cultures.*
4. *The Zhob Cultures* (from sites in the Zhob Valley of North Baluchistan).

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In addition to these cultures, many probably prehistoric sites discovered by Stein in Baluchistan and by Majumdar in Sind produced pottery that cannot, in the present state of our knowledge, be classified within the foregoing groups. Some of these sites (e.g. the Shahi-tump cemetery in Makran and the culture represented by pottery from Jhukar, Lohumjo-daro, and Chanhu-daro in Sind) are discussed in a later chapter (Chapter VI), where the evidence for their comparatively late date is given.

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Our survey of prehistoric Baluchistan can therefore begin with the *Quetta Culture*. So little, however, remains of this most interesting phase that it can hardly be dignified with the name of a ‘culture’; we are dependent on a characteristic pottery and a few fragments of alabaster cups, occurring as surface finds on five ‘tells’ in the immediate neighbourhood of Quetta. The largest of these was about 600 feet in diameter at the base and from 45 to 50 feet high, and could never have been more than a small village. As far as it was possible to determine on this and the other sites, the houses had been made of mud, or mud bricks, which had disintegrated again into homogeneous loamy soil.

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The pottery recovered from these sites is, however, of great interest (Fig. 3). It belongs to the *Buff-ware* group, and is painted in a fine, assured, free style in a purplish-brown (‘black’) paint. No use is made of a second colour (e.g. red), and we shall see that this is a most unusual feature in Baluchistan, where two-colour schemes in black-and-red are very usual. The shapes of the pots, where these can be recovered, include beakers with a slightly flaring mouth, rather squat biconical or globular bowls, shallow dishes, and at least one fragment of a raised foot-stand perforated with triangular openings. The ware ranges from pinkish-white to greenish (from over-baking), and there are one or two fragments from fine shallow bowls of grey, very hard ware with black painted ornament.

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The designs are wholly geometric and representations of animals or plants have not yet been discovered. Chevrons Stein in Baluchistan and by Majumdar in Sind, sites which yielded an aggregate of many thousands of potsherds, there is nothing strictly comparable to the Quetta material as a group. The grey-ware bowls with black painted ornament, it is true, appear also in certain Zhob Valley sites (e.g. at Sur Jangal) and in Sistan, but for parallels to the predominant Buff ware we can only look outside India, to the west. Here we immediately find precise parallels - in a group of early pottery from sites in the Fars province of Persia, notably at Tal-i-Bakun near the site of Persepolis. We shall see, when dealing with the Shahi-tump cemetery at a later stage, that certain forms of this pottery had a very long survival in Southern Persia and Baluchistan, but this derivative ware is distinctively unlike that from the Quetta sites. Quetta ware really does seem comparable to that represented by the Tal-i-Bakun site itself, Susa I, Giyan V, and Sialk III, and may be equally early in date. This is supported by the evidence from Anau in Russian Turkestan, where intrusive elements appearing between Anau I and II include black-on-red painted ware, buff ware with ornament in red-and-black, and buff ware with distinctive stepped motifs - an assemblage which seems to point strongly to Baluchistan as its probable point of origin.

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Pending further field-work and excavation, the fuller content of the Quetta Culture, which seems to be the earliest yet identified in Western India, must remain unknown to us. When we turn to the next group of cultures within the Buff-ware class we have relatively abundant information on a number of sites scattered over a large area, though the evidence is none of it derived from scientific or large-scale excavations.

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The composite title adopted, the Amri-Nal Culture, indicates the two extremes of variation which can be seen in an otherwise allied group of pottery types, which can be divided into three phases. The earliest typologically (though, as will be seen, not perhaps chronologically in all instances) is represented at Amri in Sind, where characteristic ware was first identified by Majumdar, the latest by the cemetery of Nal in Baluchistan excavated by Hargreaves; and the site of Nuṅdara, discovered by Stein in South Baluchistan, is a convenient representative of a middle phase. It is clear, however, that these pottery types are really linked, and this, with other factors (notably the absence of clay figurines of animals or humans in all three phases), seems to justify their treatment under one inclusive head.

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The geographical distribution of the Amri phase is represented mainly by sites in Sind at the foot of the Kirthar Range and between the Baran and the Gaj Rivers. In its later phases its main area of occupation is in South Baluchistan, from the headwaters of the Kech Kaur north-eastwards through Kolwa, up the Mashkai Valley to Nal in Jhalawan, and with sporadic sites farther north up to the Bolan Pass at Quetta, and others at the headwaters of the Kolachi, and down the Kolachi-Gaj valleys into Sind above Lake Manchhar, along the routes already referred to. It has also been recently reported from Las Bela State at the southern end of the Baluchi Mountains.

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Turning now to the type and range of the settlements, we find that in practically all instances the sites take the form of ‘tells’, formed by the debris of accumulated occupations and ranging from 10 to 40 feet in height. It is difficult to estimate the relative areas covered by the individual settlements because quite often the characteristic pottery by which the culture is distinguished was picked up only on the surface of the mound or comes from trial trenches in the uppermost level. Such an occupied area on top of a tell will of course be far smaller than the overall dimensions of the mound at its base. For instance, the Kargushki-damb in Rakshan is a tell some 530 by 360 yards at its base and 40 feet high, but Stein’s trial trenches (which yielded typical Nal sherds associated with the walls of buildings) were made above the 30-feet contour, where the area available for occupation had diminished to about 200 by 100 yards, and one cannot assume that the preceding 30 feet of unexcavated material was necessarily the product of the same culture.

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However, at Nundara itself the settlement producing the pottery of the type designated from this site seems likely to have occupied an area not far removed from the total 220 by 180 yards of the tell, while at Bandhni in Sind the area of Amri occupation may have been as much as 400 by 230 yards. But at the Sind sites of Pandi Wahi and Ghazi Shah, where excavation showed that the Amri ware levels were definitely at the base of the mounds, the areas were about 150 by 115 yards and 170 by 160 yards respectively, and other sites have similar proportions. The average size of the settlements, as far as it has been ascertained at present, seems in fact to have been something under two acres - about the size of the area enclosed by the lowest contours at Tepe Gawra, to instance a well-known prehistoric site in Mesopotamia.

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At Kohtras Buthi in Sind there is a small settlement on a hill-spur which has double defensive walls built across the base of the spur to form, in European archaeological terminology, a ‘promontory-fort’ of the site. This fortification suggests comparison with another Sind site, that on Tharro Hill. Here is an isolated, flat-topped hill, now inland but on what was the prehistoric coast-line, from which it would have projected as a promontory or as an island in tidal marshes. The fortifications, as at Kohtras Buthi, take the form of double walls, curved and of massive construction and 50 feet apart, cutting off the southern headland of the hill in true promontory-fort manner. These walls are now ruined, though a stretch of original face has been exposed at one point on the inner defences, and their nature was unrecognized by Majumdar when he visited and reported on the site. Amri ware occurs on the surface, but there is also evidence of considerable occupation with plain red ware allied to that of Harappā, and it is therefore uncertain to which phase the defences belong, though the Amri period seems the most likely. At Dhillanijo-kot, again in Sind, there are traces of a defensive wall surrounding the Amri settlement, but in general the villages appear to have been undefended by walls or ramparts.

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Stone was used for building at least the foundation courses of walls in most of the sites where architectural remains could be identified at all; in some of the Sind sites especially it is probable that the upper parts of the walls were of mud brick or pisée, and that a couple of courses of stones alone formed the foundations. But at Nundara, Kargushki-damb and Rodkan in Baluchistan coursed stone slabs set in mud mortar were used for the walls of houses at least up to window height, and at the latter site large blocks alternated with triple courses of small flat stones to give a decorative effect.

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At Nundara some walls of mud bricks were found, as well as the masonry structures, the individual bricks measuring 21 by 10 by 4 inches, while mud bricks of the same dimensions were used to make the rectangular tombs of two infants and an adult in the Nal cemetery. At Nundara, too, the refinement of white plaster over the inner faces of stone and brick walls was observed.

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In the Sind sites of Pandi Wahi and Ghazi Shah, where abundant occupational debris was found but no trace of buildings could be identified, it may be assumed that pisée was used exclusively and that it has (as at Quetta) disintegrated in the course of centuries. It is always possible, however, that mud bricks were in fact present, but unrecognized by the excavators.

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Owing to the extremely limited excavations which have taken place and the absence of any detailed field surveys of the remains which are briefly recorded as visible on the surface of certain sites, our knowledge of the lay-out of the settlements is extremely meagre. The published plan of Nundara suggests blocks of buildings comforming to a common orientation at least in the south-east part of the site, and in the most interesting hill fortress of Kohtras Buthi, already mentioned, Majumdar describes the surface indications of ‘the outlines of countless rooms, both large and small, grouping themselves into blocks separated from one another by alleys’ inside the cyclopean defensive wall, but apparently separated from it by an open space. This wall of large, roughly-coursed blocks has at least four exterior bastions and the remains of an entrance, while the ruins of a slighter outer defence wall lie about 100 feet away. The published plan is, however, very inadequate.

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It is possible to say a little more about the plans of individual buildings or groups of rooms. On no site does any building or group of ruins suggest a temple or palace, and the plans recovered all seem to belong to small private houses. At Nundara groups of rooms which may constitute associated elements fall into blocks about 40 feet square, within which there may be eight or ten subdivisions of sizes varying from large rooms or courtyards 15 by 15 feet or 15 by 10 feet, to small compartments 8 by 5 feet or less, and in two of the blocks there seems to be a fairly consistent plan of large rooms or courtyards, each associated with half a dozen smaller ones. Rooms of similar proportions also seem characteristic of the Sind sites; at Kohtras Buthi a structure interpreted by Majumdar as a bath occupied the corner of one room by the entrance, and in the same house the remains of a stairway, implying access to a flat roof or an upper storey, were found. Doorways of houses of which only stone foundations remained were rarely possible to identify, as such foundations would continue to form the door sill; but at Kargushki-damb a doorway was found still retaining traces of its wooden lintel, and at Rodkan, in a wall still standing 5 feet high, a window was preserved, 1 foot 4 inches wide, its top formed by overlapping corbelled courses of stone. At Nundara several chambers with walls preserved to a height of at least 10 feet, in one instance, had no openings in the wall and contained a massive square stone-built pillar in the centre. Such chambers can best be explained as cellars, entered by trap-doors from the room above, the central pillar acting as additional support to the floor.

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The width of roadways between houses can be measured in a few instances - 6 to 8 feet at Nundara, and narrow alleys 3 feet to 2 feet 6 inches wide at Lohri and Kohtras Buthi.

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In addition to this information on the settlement sites, we are fortunate in having knowledge of two cemeteries, one in Baluchistan and one in Sind, both with pottery of the Nal phase, which in fact derives its name from the former site. The Sohr-damb of Nal was excavated on a fairly large scale, but at the Damb Buthi cemetery in Sind little work was done, and it is therefore to Nal that we turn for our fullest information on the burial rites of the culture.

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When Hargreaves began his work at Nal the site had already been largely plundered by predatory digging at the beginning of the present century by an English colonel of antiquarian leanings, whose acquisitive enthusiasm for painted pots more than outweighed any vestiges of scientific interest he may have possessed, and to whose discredit the removal and subsequent disappearance of at least 200 vessels from the cemetery must be placed. Hargreaves found that the burials had been made in the deserted ruins of a settlement on the lower slopes of the main tell of the site; this settlement, in which he made several trial cuttings, did not itself yield any artifacts characteristic of the Amri-Nal Culture, and the scanty pottery finds fall in all probability into the Zhob Culture series, under which heading the occupation site is therefore described.

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In the cemetery, however (Hargreaves’ Sites A and G), between 30 and 40 burial groups were excavated, the greater number associated with characteristic pottery, 270 vessels being recovered. If this proportion of burials to pots is typical, as seems likely, the 300 odd pots found by Colonel Jacobs and other unscientific diggers in the same cemetery must represent another 40-50 burials, so that at least 100 interments must have been made in that area of the cemetery dug into and recorded in some way or other. As we are ignorant alike of the full extent of the burial ground and of finds made but not recorded, the figure is almost certainly an understatement of the total content.

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Such a number of burials in one cemetery (and it should be pointed out that some of the Nal burial groups include the skeletal remains of six or seven individuals) implies a settled community of some duration, and the superposition of two layers of burials noted by Hargreaves reinforces this. On the other hand, several of the small communities which the habitation sites described above imply may have used a common cemetery over a proportionately shorter space of time, and there are surface indications of more than one such in the immediate vicinity of the Sohr-damb.

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The burial rite was inhumation - at Nal one adult and three infants in the same part of the cemetery were normal burials with complete skeletons (the adult was recorded as on its left side and slightly flexed), but the dominant rite here and at Damb Buthi was that of ‘fractional’ burial-inhumation of fragments of the skeleton, probably after previous exposure and disintegration. Some of the Nal groups represented several individuals, adults and children together; others comprised merely a few bones from a single skeleton, and at Damb Buthi in one instance at least two adults were represented in a single burial group.

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The burials at Nal were normally placed in the earth without any form of protection, but three of the complete inhumations (the adult and two infants already referred to) were enclosed in rectangular mud-brick graves, the individual bricks measuring 21 by 9 by 3½ inches. No trace of covering was detected. At Damb Buthi the fractional burials were contained in contiguous small rectangular stone-built chambers, about 5 by 8 feet, presumably analogous to the brick constructions at Nal, though the possibility of their being really rooms of abandoned dwellings must not be excluded.

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Grave-goods with the fractional burials at both sites consisted in the main of pottery vessels, and a flat copper axe accompanied one burial at Nal. Animal bones, mainly sheep or goat, were found in at least six graves at this site, and there were bones of ox at Damb Buthi - no doubt food offerings. At each site there was a burial with red pigment - placed in a pair of mussel shells at Damb Buthi and with a colour-grinder at Nal. A great number of beads were found at Nal in the same areas as, though not directly associated with, the fractional burials; shell and pottery bangles were a distinctive feature in the Sind site.

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The complete inhumations at Nal had no pottery associated with them, the only grave-goods being bead necklaces with the two infants, but there was no direct evidence that these burials were not contemporary with the remainder of the cemetery.

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In the cemetery area at Nal two hoards of copper implements were found, with no directly associated skeletal remains. These again are presumably contemporary with the burials and pottery, and the axe found with one of the fractional burials is of a type similar to those in the hoards.

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As we have already seen, we have to rely mainly on pottery in distinguishing one culture from another (Fig. 4). The two pottery types, Nal ware and Amri ware, seem to me to be parallel, slightly divergent, products of a single culture, the economic and architectural aspects of which (as far as they can be studied) have just been discussed as the Amri-Nal Culture. In South Baluchistan sites such as Nundara yield sherds of vessels which, in forms and more particularly in ornament, seem to represent an ancestral stock, from

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FIG. 4. Amri and Nundara beakers and Nundara bowls (red paint stippled)

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which derived on the one hand the only slightly evolved Amri ware found across the mountains in Sind, and on the other the highly developed Nal ware which seems to reach the height of its specialization at the type-site in Jhalawan, at the head of the Nal River - the cemetery just described. But despite the divergences, even in their most extreme forms the two pottery styles show traces of their common origin. In the following description of the wares in greater detail we shall look first of all at the features shared by the sub-groups and then at the characteristic divergences.

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The vast majority of all vessels of Nal and of Amri ware have a distinctively very fine soft buff or pinkish paste, which may sometimes approach an off-white and occasionally have a green tinge. On this, a white slip is frequently applied as a background for painted ornament. At Nal itself, where the larger scale of excavation and the abundance of intact vessels provided a cemetery gave a more extended series than is otherwise available, a limited number of vessels of grey or even dark-brownish colour, sometimes verging on black, were found, either unornamented or with motifs in relief or light paint, quite unlike the more abundant vessels of pale paste. The excellence and homogeneity of the paste in all the vessels are shown by the extremely thin walls often obtained. The pots are normally wheel-turned.

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When we come to examine the forms of the pots divergence is more apparent than in ware or ornament. The scanty potsherds permit few complete restorations of the Amri vessels, but the tall globular beakers from, for instance, Lohri and Damb Buthi in Sind, taken in conjunction with numerous rim and shoulder fragments of the same type from all the Sind sites seem likely to be one characteristic form. Similar pots are suggested by sherds from Baluchistan, for instance at Zila and Hor-Kalat, associated with more specifically Nal forms, and, as will be seen, the ornament on these beakers also presents close parallels to Amri patterns.

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A distinctive type which can be identified on at least two Amri sites (Amri itself and Pandi Wahi) is a shallow pedestal foot, which may belong to vessels of beaker type or, less probably, to bowls not otherwise identified. At Nal a single pedestal-foot has been recorded, though higher and more columnar than those suggested by the Amri sherds, and almost certainly from a bowl or ‘offering-stand’ type of vessel.

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In such Baluchistan sites as Nundara, where the pottery is domestic and does not present the high degree of stylization present in the funerary vessels from the Nal cemetery, a straight-sided ‘bucket’ type occurs together with simple beaker forms, less globular than the norm of Amri ware. Neither of these forms appears in the Nal cemetery, where the bulk of the vessels are variations on bowl types with the diameter greater than the height. Actual bowls range from shallow open forms (also characteristic of a dark ware peculiar to the site), globular bowls in which the rim incurves so that the shoulder diameter exceeds that of the mouth, small straight-sided cups, and squat shouldered pots rather similar to the bowls. A very remarkable form, found not only at Nal but also at many other sites of the culture in Baluchistan and in Sind, is the straight-sided ‘canister’ type of vessel, which is the most distinctive of all the Nal pottery types. Most of these types recur at the cemetery of Damb Buthi, mixed with other forms, such as tall beakers, more specifically characteristic of Amri ware. Peculiar to Nal itself are small saucers, pinched in on four sides to form vessels like the modern Indian *chiragh* that one may assume that they, like their recent analogues, were used as lamps. A couple of double cylindrical pots from Nal may also be noted.

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The painted ornament on the two groups of pottery appears at first sight to present a bewildering complexity of motifs, but there are certain main classifications which simplify the issue. Designs representing animal or plant forms are absent on Amri ware, but on the other hand are typical on Nal pots. An Amri sherd with part of the representation of an ox from Tando Rahim Khan, and a possible second example from Chauro serve merely to emphasize the total absence at all other sites except where (as shown below) it is derived from Kulli ware. Again, the material from Nal not only has motifs peculiar to itself, but lacks several patterns which appear farther south at Nundara and other sites and also in Amri ware. The decorative motifs may therefore be divided conveniently into two heads - first, motifs common to Amri and the southern Nal culture sites (such as Nundara), with a small sub-group of motifs peculiar to Amri itself, and, secondly, motifs common to all Nal sites but not present at Amri, and a subdivision of motifs peculiar to the Nal cemetery itself. All motifs are firmly outlined in a black or brownish paint applied with a stiff brush. Red paint is used as a secondary colour in Amri and the Nundara group of sites, and at Nal itself and a few other sites this red paint is augmented by yellow, blue, and green pigments to form an elaborate polychrome style. This use of blue and yellow is very remarkable, as it is almost unknown elsewhere in prehistoric Western Asia.

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The ornamental features common to Amri and to such South Baluchistan sites as Nundara, Kargushki-damb, and some others are in the main as follows. First, a panelled arrangement is common, the panels being outlined horizontally and vertically with multiple lines. Then, within the rectangles so formed, a frequent motif is a secondary panel of black-and-white chequers, outlined by concentric rectangles of alternate red and black lines. Finally there is much use of horizontal (less commonly vertical) bands made of such motifs as solid diamonds corner-to-corner, hatched diamonds, small chevrons, loops (sometimes multiple), the 'sigma' ornament, and 'scale' pattern.

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In Sind, but apparently not in Baluchistan, there are also appear motifs peculiar to the Amri ware of that region, beginning with the use of red paint in a broad horizontal band between black lines at the top (and in one example at least the bottom) of the decorated area of the pot. There are two interesting variations on the chequer motif - a criss-cross of vertical and horizontal lines, arranged in panels, and panels of squares half-filled diagonally. One example at least shows large pointed oval forms outlined by multiple alternating red and black lines. But these divergent types of ornament (except the use of broad red horizontal bands, which is almost constant) are distinctly uncommon, and most pots have ornamental motifs in common with the Nundara style.

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When we turn to the decorative motifs distinctive of the Nal style the main feature noticeable is a tendency to use multiple parallel lines to form not only panels but such patterns as diagonal steps or stepped chevrons, equal-armed crosses, diamonds, circles, and numerous variations of overall curved motifs in multiple wavy patterns. These geometric motifs are most distinctive of the Nal style, combined in the Nundara region with the use of red, and at Nal itself and analogous sites with red, blue, green and yellow paint used in flat blocks of colour, but not in lines (Fig. 5).

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In addition, striking representations of animals occur - in Nundara ware there are animals, probably lions, fishes, and birds represented, the bodies often being filled in with red paint. A single representation of an ox occurs (at Hor-Kalat: Fig. 8, bottom centre), and heart-shaped motifs, based on the forms of the leaves of the pipal tree, also occur, and may owe their origin, as we shall see, to influence from the Indus Valley. The pipal, or sacred fig, was accounted a holy tree in prehistoric India and still retains its sanctity today. At Rohel-jo-Kund, Pandi Wahi, Kerchat, and other sites in Sind decorative motifs, such as animals or rows of stylized ibex heads, which appear to be derived from the Kulli Culture, appear alongside the normal Nal ornament.

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In the mature Nal phase as seen in the cemetery itself the FIG. 5. Polychrome Nal Ware (red paint stippled, yellow horizontal and blue vertical shading)

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decorative repertoire is at once more limited and more complex. The simple patterns of chequers, diamonds, red-outlined panels, and ‘sigma’ signs seem to have been forgotten, the multiple-outlined rectilinear and curved figures have become complicated and dominant, and overall intersectingcircle ornament is also seen. The animal representations now include new types of birds, ibexes, and scorpions: a curious yoke-shaped symbol, perhaps stylized from the ‘sigma’, frequently appears. Colours now extend not only to red but to blue, green, and yellow. Though these latter tend to be fugitive and easily rubbed off the surface of the pot, the fact that no trace of colour other than red can be detected on the abundant sherds at Nundara seems to justify the conclusion that a two-colour decoration was all that was in vogue there.

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Although we have described as a stylistic sequence the relationship between the Amri, Nundara, and Nal styles of pot painting, it is not possible to say that these stages actually followed one another in time. The decisive evidence, of course, would be that of stratigraphy, but, as we have seen, the lack of good stratigraphical sequences is one of the troubles in Indian prehistory, and we can throw little light on the relationships of the three styles by this means. At the sites in the Nundara region, Amri types appear to be associated superficially with those distinctive of Nundara itself, and in Sind Nal motifs and potsherds do occur in a stratigraphical context, which implies that they are contemporary with at least a late phase of Amri. On the whole, the impression one gains is that while the curious and elaborate Nal style evolved in the mountain fastnesses of Jhalawan, the less distinctive Amri motifs enjoyed a long popularity with little change in Sind, and that the Nundara style may well have continued to exist side by side with both of these.

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Turning now to other aspects of the material culture, we have important evidence of metal-working in the Amri-Nal group. In the Nal cemetery two hoards of copper implements were found, the first (in Room A3 of a house of the deserted settlement into which the cemetery was dug) containing five objects, three of which were flat axes, the cutting edges not splayed, and the butts tapering. The other two objects were a very long, parallel-sided chisel with unsplayed edge, and another fragment of a tapering axe or chisel. The other copper hoard, in Room A5, comprised two axes with slightly splayed and curved cutting edges and narrow elongated butts, an axe or chisel with slightly splayed edge and a very elongated bar-shaped butt, a straight-sided saw, part of a tanged knife or spear-head, and another fragment, probably of a knife. No analyses were made of these tools, but a fragment of a similar type of axe found near gave:

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| Copper | .. | .. | .. | 93.05 per cent. |
| Lead | .. | .. | .. | 2.14 ,, ,, |
| Nickel | .. | .. | .. | 4.80 ,, ,, |
| Arsenic | .. | .. | .. | trace |

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A few other fragments of copper implements were found at Nal (and as we have seen, one axe was found with a burial), and a copper bangle at Nundara. At Ghazi Shah in Sind there was a copper bead in the Amri levels.

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These copper tools are interesting from several points of view. The composition of the metal, with its surprisingly high proportion of nickel, should prove to be a valuable pointer to the source of the native ore when more is known about the distribution of impurities in native copper deposits of the Orient. We know that certain copper objects from Mesopotamia had a relatively large proportion of nickel in their composition - two Early Dynastic specimens, from Ur and Kish respectively, had as much as 3.34 and 2.20 per cent., though the average is below this - and a possible source for Sumerian copper, the mountains of Oman, yield an ore with a perceptible nickel content. On the other hand, nickel is sometimes present in the copper used at Mohenjo-daro and Harappā, rising to 9.38 per cent. in one object and to 3.34 in another, and its presence is attested in the ores of Rajputana and Afghanistan. There is, therefore, in the present state of our knowledge an unfortunately wide field over which we can look for a probable origin for the Nal copper: it may be a local Baluchi ore, for ancient copper workings are alleged to exist in that area. The comparatively small amount of arsenic suggests a source different perhaps from that which produced the copper of the Harappā Culture.

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The types of tools will be commented on at a later stage when we come to discuss the affinities and date of the culture, but for the present it is sufficient to notice the primitive form of flat axe, similar in general terms, though not in detail, to those of equally primitive type from the Harappā Culture. As we shall see, the more sophisticated shaft-hole axe, known in Mesopotamia from Early Dynastic times, is a late-comer to Western India.

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In contrast to their abundance throughout most of the ancient Bronze Age cultures of Persia and Mesopotamia, the virtual absence of stamp-seals in Western India is very marked — except, that is, in the Harappā Culture, with its very distinctive series of square seals, so well known. In the Amri-Nal Culture there is only one seal certainly recorded, and that is from the Nal cemetery. Here was found a curious seal of irregular shape engraved with a vulture, outlined and cross-hatched in the technique of the bird drawings on the pottery, with its foot on a snake. The material of the seal is steatite, the surface artificially bleached white in a manner very common in the Harappā Culture. There was also a copper stamp seal found during the Nal excavations, but there is nothing to associate it directly with either the earlier settlement or the later cemetery on the site, though, as we shall see in Chapter VI, it is likely to be relatively late in date.

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Beads were found in some abundance in the Nal cemetery, biconical or barrel-shaped and made of agate or carnelian, and an agate bead was found at Ghazi Shah in Sind. Lapis lazuli was also used for beads at Nal, and a bead of this stone was also found in Sind, at Pandi Wahi. Lapis, as we shall see in Chapter V, is an exotic substance much valued in the ancient Orient, and probably obtained mostly from Persia or Afghanistan. It was used by the Harappā folk, and there are lapis beads from other sites in Baluchistan. An important substance used at Nal for making beads, especially tiny discs, was the artificial paste with glass frit known as faience - a substance well known in the Harappā Culture but not elsewhere in prehistoric Western India, and fitting in with the evidence of the whitened steatite seal. Another point of contact may be afforded by a perforated stone weight from Nal and two others from a site probably of the same culture at Nichara, all of which are very similar in shape to weights from Mohenjo-daro. As we shall see, the system of weights in the Harappā Culture is curious and distinctive, but the Nal weight does not fit into the known series, though the type is distinctly similar to the Mohenjo-daro specimen.

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In the Damb Buthi cemetery were pottery and shell bracelets similar to those of the Harappā Culture, and in at least seven Amri sites in Sind were found chert blades and cores; this pre-metallic industry of stone tools has been mentioned in Chapter II and need not necessarily imply a particularly great antiquity, for there is a noticeable survival of such blades in the Harappā Culture itself. Finally it should be noticed that there was no evidence that any of the clay figurines of animals found in the Nal excavations were associated with the cemetery, and in view of their total absence from all other sites of the Amri-Nal Culture, they may safely be attributed to the previous settlement (of Red-ware folk), into the ruins of which the cemetery was dug.

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We are now in a position to summarize our knowledge of the Amri-Nal Culture and to review it in its relationship with other Indian prehistoric cultures and those of the Bronze Age Orient at large. The small settlements, with houses built of stone or mud brick, compare, as we shall see, with those of Kulli or the Zhob Valley people: the lack of burnt bricks suggests that any contact with the Harappā Culture was not of so fundamental a character as to introduce this way of building. Of lay-out and house-plans we know little, and we can only say that here, as with the other Baluchistan cultures, there is a generalized resemblance to the village or small urban communities known throughout the Ancient East in the prehistoric periods, which, even though not contemporary in date with those of India, represent the background from which they emerged.

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The burial rites as seen in the cemeteries of Nal and Damb Buthi, with either total or fractional inhumations, do not give us many points of contact elsewhere. Cremation seems the rite in the Zhob Culture, and probably again in Kulli. On Tharro Hill, in Sind, there are burial cairns near the defended settlement presumably covering inhumations, but the associated pots suggest a form of the Harappā Culture rather than relationship with the Amri ware from the site. At Harappā itself the burials in the R 37 Cemetery were extended inhumations, contemporary with the occupation of the city, and in the later H Cemetery at the same site the earliest phase had both normal and fractional inhumations laid in the earth with accompanying pots, the second phase fractional burials in pots. Both phases appeared to be subsequent to the main occupation of the city.∗ On the whole, then, the rites of the Nal cemetery suggest comparison with the first phase of the H Cemetery at Harappā rather than with other sites, but this can hardly be taken as signifying any close connexion between the two in culture or chronology.

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∗ To anticipate a point argued in greater detail later on, I should say that I do not accept the so-called ‘post-cremation burials’ in the Harappā Culture as being burials at all.

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In Sind there is a certain amount of direct stratigraphical evidence for fixing the position of Amri ware at least in relation to the Harappā Culture. At the type-site of Amri itself, at Ghazi Shah, Lohri and Pandi Wahi, the stratified sequence showed on each site an earlier occupation with Amri ware (and a small proportion of Nal types), later superseded by a Harappā Culture settlement. At Pai-jo-Kotiro in the Gaj Valley, however, the two cultures seem to be mixed, and chronologically indistinguishable. At Ghazi Shah the later occupation is of extreme interest as containing not only Harappā types of black-on-red pottery, but others which show motifs derived from Kulli sources, and on one pot even Nundara (or Nal) patterns painted on in black on a strong red background. This all suggests that there was approximate contemporaneity between at least the later phases of the Amri-Nal Culture and that of Kulli and perhaps with the earlier settlements of the Harappā Culture in Sind; further Kulli influence is perceptible at Rohel-jo-Kund in the Gaj Valley on sherds contemporary with Nundara or Nal styles, and on several other sites in Sind. But in the Nal cemetery, as we have seen, there is clear evidence of contact with the Harappā Culture, and for what it is worth there is a single sherd of Nal ware from the post-Harappā (Jhukar Culture) level at the site of Lohumjo-daro.

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The animal ornament at Nundara (and to a less extent at Nal) offers a very interesting point of comparison with the Kulli Culture. On the Nundara pots the animals (mainly lions, but once an ox) are painted with curious horizontally banded stripes down their forequarters and loins, and this same peculiar trick occurs not on the painted pots, but on the painted animal figurines in the Kulli Culture (Fig. 8). The use of broad bands of red paint at the top and bottom of the main ornamental zone of a vessel is again an arrangement common to Amri ware and that of Kulli, and the Nal ‘canister’ is comparable with the squat bottle form known in Kulli-Mehi sites (Fig. 6). But the use of the *pipal*-leaf motif, and that of intersecting circles, at Nal must again be related to Harappā, and so must the faience beads, the whitened steatite stamp-seal and perhaps the stone weight. The polychrome pottery of Mohenjo-daro and Harappā is vaguely comparable to Nal, but no more; the single sherd from Chanhu-daro, however, with its use of a yellow background, may be rather more to the point.

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