The Indus Civilization (Cambridge History of India, Supplementary Volume) c8.38

c8.38

The southern buff-ware cultures begin as far north as the neighbourhood of Quetta, where Piggott was the first to identify a ceramic industry ("Quetta ware") early in appearance though not necessarily of a correspondingly early date. It occurs on some twenty sites extending from Quetta southwards to the Kalāt region on village-mounds or tells ranging up to 200 yds. in diameter and 50 ft. in height. It is painted in a "fine, assured, free style" with occasional stylized animal designs (especially caprids) but more normally with geometric designs amongst which indented or stepped and oval motives are the most distinctive. Its discoverer has compared it with wares from a number of Iranian sites (Tal-i-Bakun A, Susa I, Giyan V, Sialk III), where a date soon after the middle of the fourth millennium seems likely, but more recent excavation in the Quetta region suggests that in its later stages it tends towards a florid extravagance reminiscent of Nineveh V (mid third millennium). Be it repeated, however, that the extension of Mesopotamian dating to Baluchistan is at present fraught with uncertainty.