Early India and Pakistan to Ashoka c9.41

c9.41

All this may be claimed to make good sense, but what of the 'megalithic' Black-and-red Ware? How does that fit into the picture? Not too badly. In recent years the Black-and-red Ware has been creeping steadily northwards on the map, and there is more than a suspicion that some of the northerly examples are also amongst the earliest; in other words, that the pottery, like the iron, may have been derived by the south from the north. Indeed a few scraps of the Black-and-red have occurred with Indus or sub-Indus valley wares at Lothal and elsewhere in Kāthiāwād.¹⁰⁴ The peripheral Indus site of Lothal may well be late in its series but must be placed somewhere in the 2nd millennium B.C. Are its Black-and-red sherds truly significant in this context? The basic technique of Black-and-red Ware is widespread in space and time: for example, it occurs in ancient Egypt and modern Africa. Is the Black-and-red pottery of India necessarily a unitary problem? The door must be kept open to doubt; the more so since at Rangpur, only a short distance from Lothal, more substantial vestiges of Black-and-red Ware were separated from the sub-Indus culture of the site by a distinctive intervening phase (p. 138). But evidence of continuity in the Black-and-red wares of India is in fact accumulating within the general limits of the 1st millennium B.C., and the problem should solve itself beyond doubt in the near future.