Minerals and Metals in Ancient India v1.c10.s3.t3: Sothi Culture on the Sarasvati Valley
Minerals and Metals in Ancient India v1.c10.s3.t3
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Sothi Culture on the Sarasvati Valley
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The Pre-Harappan tradition in the Rajasthan-Haryana area is usually known as the Sothi culture. (Ghosh, 1964) It is characterised by a typical ware of pale red colour with black paintings laid on a whitish band serving as the secondary base. This ware was found in the site of Sothi located in the Bikaner deserts on the Ghaggar or Sarasvati, flowing through Ganganagar district of Rajasthan.
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The Pre-Harappan Sothi ware has been found at Jalilpur, 78 km south-west of Harappa along with the Kot Dijian ware. The site showed chert blades, a rectangular bead of gold sheet with tabular perforation, shell bangles, female figurines, lapis lazuli beads and copper or bronze rods.
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The best varieties of the ware have been located in Kalibangan I dated 2900 BC. This site in Rajasthan situated on the left bank of the now dried up river Ghaggar or Sarasvati showed six varieties of Sothi ware and use of white (called ‘Sothi’) paint and lime plaster. Bangles of copper, terracotta and shell, and beads made of agate, carnelian, shell and copper have been found. An axe, a parasu and more than a hundred copper artefacts of Rajasthan origin have been found.
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Criss-cross furrow marks characterise the earliest ploughed field excavated anywhere in the world.
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So far, the excavators have published only three copper objects from the Pre-Harappan levels of Kalibangan, viz., a curved blade (chopper), a celt and bangle. (Lal, 1979: 70) On the basis of personal communication however, Agrawala (1984) reports that there were 56 copper objects which included antimony rods, rings, wire pieces, lumps, bangles, pins, arrowheads, beads, rods, celts etc. No other Pre-Harappan site has reported such an array of copper objects. The obvious source was the Ganeshwar-Jodhpura industrial complex. The list of copper objects at Kalibangan further expanded during the Harappan period (after 2500 BC): apart from the above-mentioned items also added were — hooks, chisels, spearheads, knives, awls, nails, blades, earrings, drills, daggers, needles, razors, mirrors, figures of bulls etc.
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Banawali lies 15 km north-west of Fatehabad, and on the middle-upper course of a tributary of the Ghaggar, now identified as the Rgvedic Sarasvati. Period I is Pre-Harappan and shows sun-dried and kiln-fired bricks as in Kalibangan. These were meticulously standardised conforming to the ratio 1 : 2 : 3. A house complex with several hearths, ovens and fire pits indicating excessive fire activity was plausibly the workshop of a metalsmith. The ceramic inventory records all six Kalibangan fabrics, some with black and white pigments. There were a microblade of chalcedony, beads of gold, semi-precious stones, steatite (including disc beads), faience, shell, bone and clay; bangles of shell, faience and copper. (Bisht, 1982) Siswal, situated on the left bank of the Chautang river in Haryana, 26 km west of Hissar, also had a Pre-Harappan phase as in Kalibangan I.
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M.R. Mughal (1982 a, b) conducted in Pakistan a major programme of archaeological investigations into 414 sites in the Cholistan Desert of the former Bahawalpur state through which ran the Rgvedic Sarasvati river known as Hakra in Pakistan. Of the 414 sites, 99 belonged to the fourth millennium BC. Hakra ware or Jalilpur I Phase, 40 were early third millennium BC Pre- or Early-Harappan-cum-Kot Dijian ware phase and 174 represented Mature-Harappan Phase. During the Early- or Pre-Harappan Phase the main focus of occupation shifted from Kalibangan (in India) to south-west towards Fort Abbas and Yazman (on the Pakistan side). The settlements became larger as in Gamanwala (27.3 hectares, half the size of Harappa) and multifunctional — separating residential and industrial activities. During the Mature-Harappan period this trend continued. There was a further shift towards the south-west — maximum number of sites centering around Derawar Fort. Ganweriwala site (81.5 hectares), was closer to and as big as Mohenjo-Daro. Many sites were demarcated exclusively for craft activities such as the firing of pottery, bricks, small terracotta objects, the glazing of faience objects and the melting and fabrication of copper objects. At the Siddhuwala Ther, located near Derawar, Sir Aurel Stein had found a number of kilns and a copper ingot. The source of the copper metal was presumably the Ganeshwar-Jodhpura area in Rajasthan.
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Hakra or Sarasvati was a perennial river till the middle of the third millennium BC, when the water supply between Fort Abbas (on the Pakistan side of the border) and Yazman was considerably diminished or cut off. This might have caused desertion of sites and some population movement back to north-east. This reversal of population movement vector might explain the replacement of the earlier Sothi culture by the Harappan culture in the eastern sites of Sarasvati such as Kalibangan, Banawali etc.
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The Cholistan archaeological discoveries by M. Rafique Mughal clearly show how the Harappan civilization was founded, and urbanisation progressed through the spread of the chalcolithic culture from the eastern provinces of Rajasthan, Haryana and Punjab. There were similar influx and contributions from the west of Indus also, but mostly from thr northern, middle and southern Baluchistan, i.e., from within the Indian sub-continent.