Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c13.54

c13.54

In the Ganges Basin and on the adjacent uplands to the south-east a number of finds of copper tools have been made, either singly or in hoards of up to 400 objects (as at Gungeria, Balaghat). The finds fall into two groups, one in the valleys of the Ganges and the Jumna rivers above their point of junction and the other centred round the Ranchi uplands, and the characteristic tool present throughout is the flat copper or bronze axe, of simple forms all similar in general terms to the flat axes of the Harappā Culture. But the very simplicity of the forms make close affiliation difficult, and we can turn with more confidence to another type recurring in these finds, the elongated axe or chisel which has been called a ‘bar-celt’. Although precise parallels to these tools do not occur in the Harappā metal series, nevertheless at Chanhu-daro in particular very narrow, elongated axes appear, which could well be ancestral, and in the important series of copper tools from the Nal cemetery in Baluchistan a small version of the ‘bar-celt’ does in fact occur. As we have seen, the date of the Nal cemetery is likely to be approximately contemporary with the Harappā Culture, but it may in part survive later. It is a long way from Nal to the nearest ‘bar-celt’ find (Rajpur on the Upper Ganges), but in general the whole Gangetic axe and ‘bar-celt’ series is unlikely to be a separate and independent evolution from that of Harappā metallurgy.