Early India and Pakistan to Ashoka c6.s2.12

c6.s2.12

In recent years (1951-55) other ‘Soan’ distributions have been found in the Himalayan foothills of the Punjab: in the upper valley of the Sirsa, a tributary of the Sutlej, 30 miles west of Simla, and near Daulatpur in Hoshiarpur District 25 miles north of Jullundur. More important are B. B. Lal’s observations in the upper valley of the Beas, with its tributary the Bāngangā, in the Kangra District 230 miles north-northwest of Delhi.¹ Four sites are named: Guler, Dehra, Dhaliara and Kangra itself. At Guler five river-terraces have been identified, though whether they are equivalent to the Kashmir-Potwar series has not been determined. Again, only the three higher (earlier) terraces produced implements, all of quartzite. Terrace 1 yielded unifacial choppers, a bifacial chopping-tool, and Clactonian flakes, but no handaxes. The workmanship is crude; the choppers consist of roughly sharpened pebbles, but the more evolved pebble-tool, approximating to a handaxe, is absent. From Terrace 2, more choppers were recovered, with a pebble-handaxe, Clactonian flakes, and two others which are reasonably described as proto-Levalloisian, with due allowance for the difficulty of the material. Both the pebble-handaxe and the proto-Levalloisian flakes seem to mark an advance upon the industry of Terrace 1. On Terrace 3 were at least seven unifacial choppers and two Clactonian flakes, and either from Terrace 2 or Terrace 3 came another proto-Levalloisian flake, a pebble-handaxe, and two bifacial implements which were, with some hesitation, regarded as genuine handaxes, distinguished perhaps with an excessive nicety as Abbevillian and Acheulian respectively. Both handaxes, if such they be, are rolled and worn. On the whole, the sequence from these three terraces is not in conflict with that from the Potwar area.