Prehistory and Protohistory in India and Pakistan c7.s18: Saurashtra

Prehistory and Protohistory in India and Pakistan c7.s18

Language: English

Saurashtra

c7.s18.1

Occurrence of tools, called Series II, is known from a number of sites in Saurashtra,⁸¹ but so far no detailed report is available nor had the writer an opportunity to examine the collections.

c7.s18.2

⁸¹ I.A.R., 1957-58, p. 18; 58-59, p. 69.

Since this was written, an interesting section was noticed by the writer at Jetpur, on the left bank of the Bhadar river in the Central Saurashtra. It is nearly 30 ft. high. Over the basaltic rock (curiously) there is about 10 ft. of brownish clay or silt. This is capped by a 5 ft. or so layer of blackish cemented gravel. Over this rests a huge 15 ft. deposit of sandy silt, its top strewn with kankary gravel.

c7.s18.4

Five tools were collected in a few minutes. All these, as in Maharashtra, are on thick or thin flakes of jaspery chert, available as veins in basaltic rock. All the tools may be described as scrapers. There is a fine side scraper on thick, crescentic but angular flake; another a hollow scraper on a thin flake; and third, an end scraper on a symmetrical semi-circular flake.

c7.s18.5

These were collected from the surface, but their most likely source is the cemented gravel bed. If this is so, then somewhere on the same river, another gravel bed, a lower and earlier one - is expected. This might, as at Nevasa, contain tools of the Early Stone Age on dolerite, a few flakes of which the writer noticed on the high ground near Rojadi on this very river. In fact, a careful survey at this Harappan site is likely to yield a sequence of cultures as at Nevasa.