An Encyclopaedia of Indian Archaeology v1.c9.s14.8

v1.c9.s14.8

The Jorwe culture (c. 1400-700 b.c.) was distributed all over the present state of Maharashtra save parts of Vidarbha and the coastal region of Konkan. The people lived in large rectangular houses, sometimes consisting of a number of rooms suggesting occupation by extended families. The dead were buried inside the house. Although a village culture, some of the Jorwe settlements, as at Daimabad and Inamgaon, had almost reached an urban status. It is however enigmatic that the Jorwe settlements in the Tapti and the Godavari valleys were abandoned by the end of the 2nd millennium though the people continued to live in the Bhima valley. But they had become poor and their poverty is reflected in their coarse pottery and small round huts. The Inamgaon evidence demonstrates that agriculture was on the decline and the people were probably reverting gradually to seminomadic pastoralism and finally in the 7th century b.c. even the late Jorwe habitations were deserted. This was precisely the time when the Iron Age megalith-builders had begun to infiltrate from the s. [4.17.7-11] into the n. Deccan.