A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c8.19

c8.19

At Ādichanallur in Tinnevelly district another class of interments, urn-burials without any Megalithic appendage in the form of a bounding circle or otherwise, has been found in large numbers; though they cannot be brought strictly into the orbit of Megalithic monuments, they seem to be somehow related to them as iron implements, black-and-red ware, and fragmentary burials are common to both. There are other notable differences also. The pottery of Ādichanallur is more primitive than the Megalithic pottery of the other sites. There is found here also a quantity of bronze ware and gold diadems or mouth pieces not found elsewhere in South India but having typological parallels in Palestine about 1200 B.C. as also in Syria and Cyprus. Among the tombs of the early Iron-Age of the time of Solomon in Palestine an outstanding find was a remarkable three-pronged iron fork or trident similar to the Ādichanallur tridents in the same metal. And the eastern Mediterranean has been suggested by Childe as the region where the Megalithic complex originated, presuming that it had a single origin at all. But it is difficult as yet to say exactly when and in what order the urn-burials and the dolmen and port-hole slab reached the Indian peninsula. It seems to be clear that this iron-using culture did not grow out of the earlier Neolithic culture.