Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c9.24

c9.24

The tool-type of the Madras Industry is essentially pear-shaped or oval, flaked on both faces in such a way as to produce a continuous cutting edge – the so-called ‘hand-axe’. There is constant interaction between the Madras and Soan industries, and, as one would expect, the core-tool element is strongest in the south and south-east, while the flake or chopper types dominate when one comes farther north – e.g. in the Kurnool area. A development in technique can be traced over the long range of finds from Early Middle to Early Upper Pleistocene times, in which this greater skill is acquired in the process of flaking, with the consequent production of more elaborately finished – and smaller – tools. There is some evidence that suggests that the primary flaking in the Madras industry was done (as in the Soan) with a hammer-stone, and the finer work of the later phases with a bar of wood or horn, which alone will reproduce the characteristic flat flake-scars. (This has been shown experimentally in the study of the European Palaeolithic industries.) But many of the hand-axes of the Madras in the Kurnool area, where Soan influence was strong, are more or less manufactured by Soan techniques of stone-flaking. In addition to the regions mentioned, tools of the Madras Industry have been found in India as far south as the Rivers Cauvery and Vaigai, in the west round Bombay and north of the Narbada, and north-east as far as the upper reaches of the Son, a tributary of the Ganges.