Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c13.26

c13.26

The material culture represented among these primitive habitations includes abundant and characteristic pottery; stamp-seals; amulets; beads; metal tools and pins; bone awls and a pottery head-rest (Fig. 27). It is altogether a curious and distinctive assemblage, contrasting strongly with that of the Harappā Culture it supplants, and yet not without clear contact with it. The pottery is a buff ware, with a varied repertoire of ornament painted on it in black and red. The forms include small-footed jars and bottles of types which have general parallels in Baluchistan, but the offering-stands and saucers with a looped pattern on the edge must derive either from Harappā or from the Kulli Culture in its Harappā-influenced phase. The range of ornament is quite varied, and employs geometric and stylized plant forms which in general have a strong resemblance to the trees on Kulli ware. Other simple geometric patterns accompanied with broad horizontal bands of plum red recall the Amri style; close-set chevrons in black and bright red can be paralleled precisely on a sherd from Zayak in South Baluchistan, where other patterns too can be matched - the multiple loops and ball-and-stem motifs of Jhukar, for instance, occur at Sar-Parom and Jai-damb. And one of the two animal representations at Chanhu-daro is really not unlike one from Periano-ghundai in North Baluchistan.