History of Orissa from the Earliest Times to the British Period v1.c10.34

v1.c10.34

The polish is less distinct on the smooth surface of a celt 2.8 inches in height and 1.8 inch in breadth. The cutting edge is slightly rounded and the surface of the celt shows signs of weathering. In the second specimen the cutting edge is perfectly straight, a characteristic very rare in Indian neoliths. It measures 2.8 inches in height and 1.8 inch in breadth at the bottom. The specimen is sufficiently polished to reflect light. The polish on the third specimen, a small adze, is distinctly bright. It measures 2.6 inches in height, 1.9 inch at the base and 1.1 inch at the top. The cutting edge is distinctly curved and, being a true adze, one side of it is much more convex than the other. The next specimen is a celt or a chisel. It is highly polished and almost an isosceles triangle in shape. The greatest height is 3.2 inches and the cutting edge, though slightly rounded, is exactly 1.5 inches in breadth. This particular implement must have been used either as a chisel or a wedge. Its discovery along with older palæoliths and neolithic pottery prove that the entire site was inhabited for centuries throughout the palæolithic and neolithic periods. Exactly of the same type is the most important find of the Baidyapur series, a shouldered adze of high polish¹. It links the Central Indian neoliths with the series from the Khasia hills and proves that neolithic culture in Orissa must also be divided into two different series connected with two different and long separated waves of Austric immigration into India from the East. The polish is quite distinctive of its own and is of the same type as that of the chisel celt described above. Though the cutting edge is broken the contour shows distinctly that it was an adze and not an axe, as one side is perfectly straight. The specimen measures 4 inches in height and 2 inches in breadth. Out of this height the shouldering is 1.2 and therefore only 2.8 was available for the cutting edge.