Early India and Pakistan to Ashoka c8.65

c8.65

Nāvdā Ṭoli, the suburban site across the river, is a group of four mounds about 350 by 200 yards in extent and ten feet high, Fig. 30 Pottery of the Chalcolithic phase from Nāvdā Ṭoli. 1/4 containing huts indifferently rectangular or round on plan and built of wattle and daub with plastered walls and floors. The suggestion of the excavators that it was essentially a boatmen's village (as indeed the name implies) is probably near enough to the truth. Nevertheless, the Chalcolithic levels immediately below a crowning Iron Age stratum with N.B.P. Ware of the 5th century B.C. or later produced distinctive pottery of a type not yet recognized elsewhere in India; notably, pedestalled goblets and channel-spouted 'tea-pots' which Dr. Sankalia has compared with the spouted pots of Hissar III, or of 'Cemetery B' at Sialk in central Iran. 'Cemetery B' was dated by Ghirshman to c. 1000-800 B.C.,⁷⁸ and a recent C14 dating from an equivalent deposit at Hasanlu in Azerbaijan gives the confirming date of 812 BC ± 130 years.⁷⁹ How significant the suggested resemblance with the (much simpler) Nāvdā Ṭoli pots may be remains to be seen, particularly if a recent C14 dating for a late Nāvdā Ṭoli deposit (1336 B.C. ± 125, see p. 83) is confirmed. Intermediate examples between Persia and Nāvdā Ṭoli are at present lacking. A wide range of food-grains included rice.