History of Orissa from the Earliest Times to the British Period v1.c10.37

v1.c10.37

The importance of the great neolithic site at Baidyapur lies in its association with early pre-historic pottery. I am not aware of any other pre-historic site in Northern India in which pottery was found along with pre-historic stone implements except Mohen-jo-daro and Harappa. Pottery fragments were discovered in the excavations on the southern side of the tank along with these stone implements and hundreds of them have been recovered by Mr. Paramananda Acharya for the Indian Museum at Calcutta. I selected two particularly thick specimens from a spot about a foot below the place where the polished axe or celt was found. The material is a coarse mould in which rounded pebbles of limestone were fairly abundant. On breaking one of the pottery fragments it was found that the wet material had not been passed through a sieve or even carefully selected. The vessel appears to have been hand-made or at the best turned on a hand-lathe. The next specimen was also of the same type and the material is so coarse that it looks like a fragment of a brick at the first sight. Certain specimens are thin and I selected one other fragment in which there is a fine red slip on the vase, which possessed a carinated mouth and looked very probably like a cooking vessel. Many such fragments covered with a red slip has been collected by Mr. Acharya for the Calcutta Museum. The shape is not new and exactly similar round specimens were discovered by me at Mohen-jo-daro and by Mr. Sarat Chandra Roy in the Ranchi district. The importance of the neolithic site of Baidyapur cannot be underestimated and a regular excavation may bring to light untold wealth of antiquities which may enable somebody to complete the history of the neolithic culture in India, only the latter part of which is known to us from the excavations of Mohen-jo-daro.