An Encyclopaedia of Indian Archaeology v1.c9.s6.t2.1

v1.c9.s6.t2.1

The area covered by this culture region is taken as the mountainous tract between the Narmada and the Ganga plains up to the Dts of Allahabad and Mirzapur. In present-day political boundaries the region includes the best part of n. Madhya Pradesh and the cis-Vindhyan tracts of Uttar Pradesh with a restricted estuarine belt of the Narmada in the c. mainland of Gujarat, falling in all between 21° to 26° latitudes and 73° to 83° longitudes. [The s. part of the Vindhyan region, as defined here, has been included under c. Indian region elsewhere in this work.] The w. part of the area is an integral part of the Malwa plateau and the Satpuras and the e. part of the Vindhyan Kaimur ranges. The other two zones fall into two distinct geomorphological patterns: the latter is more hilly and forest-clad with a large river like the Son with smaller ones like the Rihand and the BELAN featuring some riparian tracts here and there; and the former, notwithstanding its ranges of hills of the Satpuras, outstandingly provides a semi-urban settlement topography with its own ecology conducive to a developed stage of settlements. The archaeological evidence, in so far as Neolithic cultures are concerned, fully bear out this disparate character of this zone from the former, where indeed some focal early Neolithic centres have been discovered in recent years. All the same it would be appropriate to point out that neither of these zones has either the environmental or the cultural context for a *primary* Neolithic upsurge, which would be expected in the epi-Palaeolithic times; and indeed the consensus of evidence in this part of India especially, when taken with the data available further e. and outside this zone in e. India, would not speak for such a devolution. Our key to the e. Indian Neolithic [4.6.6] is, as now accepted, farther beyond in S.-E. Asia, probably in the tracts now falling in the country of Thailand and perhaps also in n.-e. area of Burma adjacent to Thailand. Be this as it may, two clear zones of what may be deemed as *secondary* Neolithic farming communities have been specifically identified, one around KOLDIHAWA (DEOGHAT) and another MAHAGARA across the river, on the n. bank, both on the BELAN in Dt Allahabad and the other in the Kayatha [11.7] culture of the Malwa plateau.