Early India and Pakistan to Ashoka c6.s3.6

c6.s3.6

sites have produced a large assemblage of implements which were analysed in 1930 in a classic paper by Cammiade and Burkitt.¹⁸ The geological environment indicates a succession of prolonged pluvials and interpluvials, the basis being a reddish clayey mass of 'laterite', largely of hydrated alumina and iron-oxide, formed by the weathering of crystalline rocks under torrential rainfall alternating with dry seasons over a long stretch of time. It was on the weathered surface and in washed-down deposits of this laterite, when 'the swamps and forests of the laterite period gave place to large open plains' under supervening dry conditions, that human relics first appeared upon the scene. They consist largely of handaxes (classified as 'Series 1'), unrolled and stained by a largely-vanished capping of laterite. The implements are characteristically made from quartzite pebbles; they show the bold flaking and irregular edges which are encouraged by the coarse material and must not therefore be over-emphasized in a typological classification. Amongst the handaxes is an occasional 'rostro-carinate', with flat ventral plane produced by the removal of a large flake, and a keel-like back formed by part of the original surface of the pebble—a type similarly associated with handaxes at Victoria West in South Africa and in the Oldowan of East Africa.²³