An Encyclopaedia of Indian Archaeology v1.c10.s1.8

v1.c10.s1.8

In the case of stone industries of the Holocene [9.8.4], which include the Mesolithic [4.5], stratification and association of the materials *vis-à-vis* other detable cultures help in arriving at relative dates (Gordon, 1958, pp. 16-35; 1950, pp. 64-69). The basis for dating of the Mesolithic industries or cultures has been stratigraphy, eustatic changes and their relative occurrence at sites where datable cultural remains have been found (Misra, 1965, pp. 67-70). ‘The Mesolithic culture does not show any evidence of contact with either the Harappa culture or protohistoric cultures’ and ‘favours a fairly high dating’ such as lack of evidence of domestication, association on the basis of deposits bearing the material with a climate that changed ‘at the close of the Last Glaciation’; occurrence ‘in a gravel lens below the Harappan deposit,’ the Gujarat microlithic industry was dated to pre-2000 B.C. (Misra, 1965, p. 68). The microlithic industry at BIRBHANPUR has been placed in the early Holocene on the basis of the study of environmental conditions (Lal, 1958, pp. 39-48) and ‘placed at least in the 3rd millennium B.C., if not earlier’ (Lal, 1958, p. 36) on comparison of its typological and other features with those of other microlithic industries and its position *vis-à-vis* the Chalcolithic sites (Lal, 1958, pp. 34-9).