Early India and Pakistan to Ashoka c6.s1.12

c6.s1.12

2. *Northern Black Polished Ware (N.B.P. Ware).* Many sites in northern and central India, occasionally as far south as Amaravati, have produced this Iron Age ware, which is as distinctive in the subcontinent as is *terra sigillata* on European sites. It is wheel-made and normally thin, with a highly lustrous surface ranging from grey or brown to black, and steel-like in quality. The paste is well levigated and is white to reddish. The bright gloss is not a glaze or lacquer. The process of manufacture is doubtful: it has been thought that, after being turned on the wheel, the pots were subjected to elaborate burnishing, and then coated with a finely levigated, highly ferruginous clay, and again burnished; and that they were then fired under reducing conditions to a temperature producing an incipient fusion of the slip, this accounting for their exceptional hardness and lustre. Recently, the laboratory of the British Museum has questioned the burnishing without, as yet, providing any complete alternative explanation. Its present verdict is that 'the unfired pots were dipped in a suspension of a ferruginous inorganic material, probably resembling a red earth; and that, after firing to a temperature of c. 800° C., the kiln was sealed so that the pots cooled in a reducing atmosphere. The mineralogical identity of the "red earth" has not been discovered, and the main problem, namely the precise nature of the surface layer, still remains unsolved.'