Early India and Pakistan to Ashoka c8.98

c8.98

Again, it is with the arrival of iron in Phase II that the settlement first assumes a purposeful and urban aspect. So far as we know, houses were indeed still of timber, but their equipment now includes legged querns with grains of rice and millet, and the microliths are replaced by abundant tools and weapons of iron—spearheads, arrowheads, knives, sickles. N.B.P. Ware of the Ganges tradition once more marks the source of inspiration. The excavator, M. N. Deshpande, observes that iron here occurs some ten feet below the lowest N.B.P. sherd, recalling a less marked priority for iron also at Nāgdā (p. 138); but on sites relatively so remote from the Ganges *doāb* the utile metal may understandably have penetrated ahead of the less essential ceramic, and the two innovations may be ascribed to the same main source. Burnished ‘megalithic’ Black-and-red Ware also occurs in the form of rimless bowls and shallow dishes, and there are red globular jars with a gritty core. Massive ear-disks (for wearing in the extended lobes of the ears) of semi-precious stones recall others ascribed to the Mauryan period, roughly the 3rd century B.C., at Rājgīr and Pāṭaliputra.