Early India and Pakistan to Ashoka c7.4

c7.4

That has not carried us very far—or, rather, it has carried us too far—and the three terraces which have been noted in the Beās and Bāngangā valleys, with their consistent assemblage of choppers and handaxes (p. 40), likewise take us at present no further in this problem. But in central India the evidence begins to clear. In the last chapter attention was drawn to a remarkable disc and blade industry described by Sankalia from the upper gravels of the Pravara, tributary of the Godāvarī.³⁰ This industry apparently overlies the bulk of the Acheulian handaxes which, with rare survivals just sufficient to suggest a cultural overlap, are, if the account is correctly interpreted, concentrated in Gravel I, the lowest, of the geological succession (above, p. 46). It does not fit easily into the current categories, and may provisionally be known as the 'Upper Pravara' until its position and affinities are more amply established. Its materials are agate, chert, chalcedony and jasper, and its forms constitute a miscellany of scrapers, blades and cores. The cores, to some of which the somewhat loose term 'Clactonian' is applied, include also very non-Clactonian examples worked all over by pressure-technique, with irregular wavy edge. Amongst the blades a type about an inch long with blunted back and retouched edge merges into an end-scraper in examples with more emphatic flaking; but there are also half-round scrapers and side-scrapers with extensive retouch, and indeed the blade-scraper series exhibits a wide range and an evolved tradition. A few flakes show Levallois characters with faceted striking-platform and some retouching round the edges. Two or three implements with beaked point may be described as burins—a relatively rare type in India.