Prehistory and Protohistory in India and Pakistan c8.s17: Rajputana
Prehistory and Protohistory in India and Pakistan c8.s17
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Rajputana
c8.s17.1
In Eastern Rajputana it is the hilly flanks which yield microliths as shown by the work of MISRA⁸² and other observers.⁸³ These are rightly regarded as factory sites. So far, however, no habitation site has come to light.
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⁸² *Stone Age Cultures of Rajputana*, p. 207, ff.
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⁸³ *I.A.R.*, 1955-56, p. 61.
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Western Rajputana was completely blank. But here too MISRA⁸⁴ has found two sites in the Luni valley. Further intensive exploration should reveal many more, for beautiful raw material like chert of several shades, flint, fossil wood etc. is locally available in the out-crops of limestone at Dhaneri. In Eastern Rajputana microlithic sites occur near such outcrops, but unlike in the Western, only small nodules are available.
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⁸⁴ Op. cit. p. 207. At Adamgarh, numerous microliths were found in black soil, *I.A.R.*, 1960-61, p. 18.
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MICROLITHIC SITES IN RAJPUTANA
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However, no hint can be advanced as to the age of these Rajputana Microliths without excavations. The industry is primarily non-geometric. After this was written, the writer and his colleagues excavated at Ahar, Udaipur. A few microliths turned up in our excavations, as previously, and as at Gilund, but all these do not belong to the Copper or Chalcolithic deposits, but to an earlier phase of a hunting and forest culture. And thus we may say that in this region too the Microlithic Culture belongs to a period earlier than 2,000 B.C.