An Encyclopaedia of Indian Archaeology v1.c9.s4.1

v1.c9.s4.1

The Upper Palaeolithic culture of Europe and w. Asia evolved during the later half of the last glacial period [9.8.2] (c. 40000 B.P.) and was marked by a rapid technological advancement as well as the first expression of man’s imaginative power and artistic talent. Despite great regional variations its chief diagnostic trait is the lithic blade tool technology and economic way of utilizing the raw material by snapping a series of elongated parallel-sided blades from prismatic cores. These blades were subsequently finished into various forms such as backed knives, backed points, scrapers, awls, etc. However tools on flake-blade also form an important component of the industries. In relatively recent years planned investigations have been undertaken in India to examine the archaeological status of sporadic discoveries of blade artefacts and bone tools from the BILLA SURGAM caves of Kurnool made from the times of R.B. Foote; to locate open-air and cave sites yielding Upper Palaeolithic industries; to identify their stratigraphical position in relation to the local cultural sequences; to determine their typo-technological features; and to interpret the chronological and ecological situations. As a result it is now established that in the subcontinent, as in the other parts of the Old World, there are lithic industries based on either incipient or developed blade tool industries occupying intermediate positions, wherever stratigraphical evidence is available, between the Indian Middle Palaeolithic [4.3] and Mesolithic [4.5], and that they can be ascribed to the Late Pleistocene [9.8.2] on faunal evidence and a few ¹⁴C dates. Further a cave site in Dt Kurnool has also yielded a bone tool industry, confirming the earlier discoveries of Foote, in association with a lithic blade industry of the same age. The evidence suggests though not proving conclusively, that the absence of bone tools at the open-air stations and cave sites in other parts of the country might be due to deleterious conditions for the preservation of organic remains within the microenvironment of the sediments in which they lay buried.