An Encyclopaedia of Indian Archaeology v1.c9.s14.t1.20

v1.c9.s14.t1.20

Kayatha culture: It is the earliest known village farming culture of c. India and appears to have been introduced from outside in a mature form. It is represented at KAYATHA and also at several dozen surface sites in the region covered by the Chambal and its tributaries. The incomplete evidence from Kayatha seems to indicate that the people lived in houses with well-made floors and walls consisting of mud-plastered reed screens. The pottery belongs to three distinct fabrics. The chief fabric consists of a sturdy, wheel-thrown pottery bearing a dark brown slip and linear paintings in violet or deep-red. The vessel shapes are the bowl and basin, vase with globular body and concave neck and storage jar. An interesting feature which may hold clues for the origin of the culture is that in fabric, surface treatment and shapes, this pottery recalls the pre-Harappa [4.8] SOTHI Ware of Rajasthan. A red ware with combed decorations and a red-painted buff ware are the two other fabrics of the ceramic industry. The culture is Chalcolithic in the full sense of the term. The occurrence of two mould-prepared axes, an incomplete chisel and as many as 28 bangles of copper, the latter found in two buff-ware pots, attest to the mastery achieved in metal-working by the authors of this culture. The lithic industry is represented by a ring-stone and a short-blade industry in chalcedony made up of blades, pen-knives, points and lunates. Apart from the copper bangles Kayatha has yielded rich evidence of personal ornaments. Two beautiful necklaces, one of 173 and the other of 160 beads of semiprecious materials like agate and carnelian, were found in two pots of buff ware. The shapes represented in these beads are the long barrel, short bicone and oblate. Of equal importance is the find of a pot with over 40000 microbeads of steatite.