Early India and Pakistan to Ashoka c8.36

c8.36

As the evidence goes, then, we are confronted by a striking and individual development of metal-craftsmanship in the Ganges basin and the Orissa hills somewhere about 1000 B.C. amongst folk who were primarily hunters and probably lived in temporary villages in jungle-clearings. (Incidentally, none of the ochre sherds referred to above as possibly contemporary with the hoards has been found in association with built foundations.) Insufficiently large and wealthy to maintain specialists individually, these communities shared, it seems, in a nomadic craftsmanship for which there are many parallels. The sources from which this craftsmanship drew its initial inspiration are not clearly defined; it may be supposed that its ideas germinated in the metal traditions of the north-west (the Indus region and beyond), though it would not be surprising to discover trans-Himalayan sources in the north and north-east. This uncertainty, whilst emphasizing our present ignorance, also points the likelihood that much of the kind and quality of the hoards was due to the inventive skill of the Ganges coppersmiths themselves. Archaeology, in its search for ultimate origins, can readily overlook the possibility that those origins may lie very largely at our feet.