Early India and Pakistan to Ashoka c9.43

c9.43

The initial date of this Rājasthān series is undetermined, and the pottery bears only a generic resemblance to that of the megaliths. It continues, however, towards the south-east, to the Mālwā Plateau and the Narbadā valley, where both its date and its affinity with the megalithic ware become less dubious. At Nāgdā on the Chambal, north-west of Ujjain, the Black-and-red belongs to the Iron Age and is presumably therefore after 500 B.C. At Ujjain itself the evidence is similar; the Black-and-red Ware is associated with iron but precedes the arrival of N.B.P. Ware which, on this tolerably remote site, may have arrived relatively late. At Maheshwar on the Narbadā, the Black-and-red Ware is found mainly with N.B.P. Ware, but a little appears in the preceding Chalcolithic culture (p. 140). Farther south, at Bahal the sequence is identical; the first sherds of Black-and-red are in the top of the Chalcolithic, and the ware continues alongside N.B.P. pottery and iron. At Nāsik on the upper Godāvarī on the other hand, the Black-and-red is uncompromisingly equated with the N.B.P. Ware.