A History of Agriculture in India v1.c13.4

v1.c13.4

The Adamgarh Hill near Hoshangabad in Madhya Pradesh has rock-shelters and cave-paintings (Fig. 33). It has yielded 25,000 microliths. The earliest finds were palaeoliths, comprising hand-axes, cleavers, ovates, discoids, scrapers, flakes and cores showing predominantly Acheulian characters. The occurrence of flakes and cores in the same deposit indicates that the tools were made on the spot. The tools comprised simple, backed and saw-edged blades, lunates, points, awls and a few burins. A few potsherds and bone-pieces were also obtained from the uppermost layer of the black soil. In trenches which lay under the cave-like shelters, both the tool industries were encountered: the lowest levels comprising red clays yielded palaeoliths, and the upper layers of black or dark-brown soil had microliths. 14Carbon dating of shells from Adamgarh carried out at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research has placed the beginning of the Mesolithic age in that area at 5500 B.C. at Lekhania. The Mesolithic age was as late as 1710 B.C.