Early India and Pakistan to Ashoka c9.44

c9.44

The trend of the evidence is clear: in the Rājasthān-Mālwā region and along the great central rivers, Black-and-red pottery is liable to occur about or just before the middle of the 1st millennium B.C., and may anticipate the arrival of iron and N.B.P. Ware. The probability of an earlier date in Kāthiāwād depends upon a further examination of Lothal or some equivalent late-Harappān site. The ware does not occur in the Jumna-Ganges doāb; it would appear rather to be at home between the Arāvalli and the Vindhya Ranges and to have survived there and farther south as a folk-craft after the foreign and technically better N.B.P. Ware had arrived upon the scene. With local modifications in form, decoration and skill, it subsequently penetrated southwards with an improving technique, and was ultimately perfected by the megalith-builders and urn-field-users of peninsular India. The time-table, as at present known, fits this suggested diffusion of the Black-and-red Ware as it fits that of the 'megalithic' iron-industry. The two cultural streams, one from the northern plains, the other from the Mālwā Plateau, unite in the Deccan.