Early India and Pakistan to Ashoka c7.60

c7.60

At the other limit of the time-scale, there is no proof that these axes preceded the working of copper or bronze. True, a negative of this kind is difficult to establish since, at the best, metal was scarce amongst the axe-using communities. But, as we have seen, it was known to the axe-culture of Brahmagiri. Similarly, in the lowest post-palaeolithic phase* at Nevāsā in the Upper Godāvarī-Pravara basin polished pointed-butt axes and hammer-stones were accompanied by two chisels, a needle, a spear and four beads, all of copper or bronze, together with the microlithic (chalcedony) industry of lunates, triangles and backed blades which we are learning to associate with the axes.⁴¹ The pottery included distinctive spouted vessels with flaring rims, painted with geometrical and other designs in black on a fine re-slipped surface and comparable with the wares from other chalcolithic sites (Nasik, Jorwe, Nāvdā Tolī) in the northern Deccan. The absolute chronology of these sites has not yet been determined; but on some of them the Chalcolithic was succeeded by an Iron Age culture of the latter half of the 1st millennium B.C., and the general context is consistent with the evidence from Brahmagiri. Short of proof, it is likely that most of the polished pointed-butt and similar stone axes of India were made between 1000 and 200 B.C., with a preference for the latter half of that period.