Minerals and Metals in Ancient India v1.c16.s1.5

v1.c16.s1.5

Equally interesting is the discovery of twenty-eight copper bangles kept in thin pots. The bangles are round and solid in section and have featureless terminals. So it may be presumed that the metal was not too scarce as is usually thought. According to Sankalia, this unusually large number of metallic artefacts suggests that the Kayathans were also affluent like the Harappans. About the availability of ore, it is not certain whether native copper was available in the river beds or whether it was extracted from chalcopyrites as was probably the case with the Chalcolithic cultures of the Deccan. However, it is certain that the people of the Kayatha culture had already mastered the copper technology before their arrival at the site. (Sankalia, 1974: 428; Dhavalikar In Chakrabarti and Agarwal, 1979: 232-33).