12 Lower Palaeolithic Culture

Ravi Korisettar and Madhavi Kunneriath

Introduction

The history of mankind before the invention of alphabet is called prehistory. Prehistoric period covers the time span dating from the oldest and earliest tangible evidence of manmade tools and implements (artefacts as opposed to geo-facts) to the beginning of written records. Prehistory is therefore history of preliterate societies. On a global timescale this period begins from about 2 million years ago and ends with the emergence of Bronze Age around 5,000 years ago. In India, however, this timescale is not well defined, as we do not have well determined absolute dates for the beginning of Palaeolithic culture. While some dates place the earliest human settlement to around 2 to 1.5 million years ago, other dates suggest around 700,000 years ago. In south India the vast majority of sites are dated to 400,000 years ago, but recent dating of Attirampakkam Lower Palaeolithic in Tamil Nadu and Isampur in Karnataka pushes the antiquity of earliest human settlements in India to as far back as 1.5 million years ago. More sites of this range need to be established for a firm chronology.

2.Objectives

The chapter introduces you to the basic information and our understanding of the earliest phase of humankind in the Indian subcontinent. The nature of evidence, chronology and the typo-technological aspects of the Lower Palaeolithic or the Indian Acheulian are described here. Some of the excavated sites are briefly described.

3.General Features

The Lower Palaeolithic is represented by two major types of tools called handaxes and cleavers, the diagnostic tools of the period. The Lower Palaeolithic is also called Acheulian, named after the type site St. Acheul, near Paris in France. The Acheulian is divided into Early, Middle and Late Acheulian to identify the technological evolution of handaxes and cleavers from very large massive tools to small, thin tools. The region of the world where the Lower Palaeolithic people lived is referred to as old world, including Africa, Asia and Europe. India is part of the old world as there is ample evidence for Lower Palaeolithic human occupation. Stone tools are the chief source of information about the life ways of Palaeolithic period, as we hardly find tools made from organic materials till the Upper Palaeolithic period.

Tamil Nadu is the region from where the Palaeolithic sites were reported for the first time in India by Robert Bruce Foote in 1863. He has been rightly regarded as the Father of Indian prehistory.

It was the starting point of Indian prehistoric research. Since then hundreds of Lower Palaeolithic sites have been reported in the major river basins and some of them have been excavated.

Excavation of Lower Palaeolithic sites is a major landmark in the history of Indian archaeology. Along with stone tools, animal fossils have also been recovered from these sites. So far there is only one site in India which has yielded a fossilized cranium, from a site called Hathnora on the Narmada river in Madhya Pradesh, the northern boundary of the region of Peninsular South India. Explorations have continued to this day.

4. Explorations

A Brief History of Survey

Documentation of evidence for the Lower Palaeolithic in India began with the first discovery of a handaxe in the lateritic gravel at Pallavaram near Madras (now Chennai) by R.B. Foote on May 30, 1863. In 1865 A.B. Wynne picked up an agate flake from Paithan-on-Godavari along with animal fossils, and in 1873 C. Hackett picked up a handaxe on quartzite together with animal fossils from the Narmada River Basin at Bhutra. These finds prompted H.F. Blandford to believe that “we have evidence of the existence of man at a much earlier period than Europe in co-existence with fossil fauna”. In comparison with South India the Lower Palaeolithic survey in northern India made a tardy progress and was confined to the domain of Geologists/Palaeontologists. In the wake of industrial potential of rocks and minerals, their mapping was a full-fledged programme of the Geological Survey in British India. Among the many Geologists who were assigned with this job the names of Robert Bruce Foote and William King, of the Madras region stand out. Among others who went in search of early man, the names of A.C. L. Carlyle, Theobald, Cockburn, and Medlicot are prominent not only as Geologists but also as Naturalists interested in unravelling the geological antiquity of man in India.

Robert Bruce Foote of the Geological Survey and Archibald L. Carlyle of the Archaeological Survey were mindful of the philosophical deliberations of the Royal Society. They were imbued with the Darwinian concept of evolution. Foote was particularly inspired by Joseph Prestwich’s paper ‘On the occurrence of flint implements associated with the remains of animals of extinct species in beds of a late geological period at Amiens and Abbeville in France and in England at Hoxne’ and Carlyle revealed familiarity with John Evans’ ‘ Ancient stone implements: weapons and ornaments of Great Britain’. For many British explorers in India their knowledge of European archaeology, particularly British, was essential to their being able to carry out explorations and recognise the significance of their finds. These scholars assiduously applied themselves to updating their knowledge of developments in Europe and derived inspiration and stimulus from the achievements of their contemporaries. For Foote and Carlyle, Prehistory was not their primary occupation, therefore at the end of their official career they devoted much time for classification of their collections, providing with a relative chronology.

Cammiade and Burkitt expanded the scope of Foote’s work in South India (Kurnool region, Andhra Pradesh). Burkitt’s study of Cammiade’s collection led to discovering a large body of Stone Age evidence. The Stone Age material was classified into Series from 1 to 4, representing cultures comparable to the European subdivision of pre-Neolithic cultures, however, pending the discovery of typical representatives. Series 1 included bifaces, Series 2 flake artefacts, Series 3 blade and burins and Series 4 microliths. Cammiade and Burkitt observed similarities between South-east Indian sequences and the African ones developing under similar climatic cycles.

4. 1 Regional Evidence

The Lower Palaeolithic record based on systematic investigations in the following physiographic regions deserve a special mention as the following regions have yielded new evidence of the Lower Palaeolithic.

The Siwaliks

Till the mid-1950 not much success was achieved in locating typical pebble/core-tool industries on the Indian side that could be identified with the Soanian.

The Upper Siwalik strata are now known to yield Lower Palaeolithic evidence, either Soanian or Acheulian. Although, initially the evidence for the Acheulian was thought to be adequate, subsequent restudy proved the evidence non diagnostic of the Acheulian. In the Jammu region a large number of Soanian sites are located, comparable in number to those from Kangra, Hoshiarpur and Nalagarh Pinjore Dun. Since 1978 a series of Acheulian sites have been recorded from the Siwalik Frontal Range in the Punjab. More than 30 Acheulian sites and about 63 Soanian sites are known to date. Interestingly these category of sites were not found to occur in juxtaposition with one another. The number and density of artefacts varied from site to site, with a maximum number reported from Aitbarpur, 57 artefacts including handaxes and cleavers. Typo-technologically these assemblages are said to be Middle to Late Acheulian category. Further north in the Jammu province, at Uttarbani Lower Palaeolithic tools from below a tuffaceous bed dated to 2.8 million years ago in the Upper Siwalik beds have been reported.

Nepal

In the Nepal sub-Himalayas the oldest cultural remains dating back to the Middle Pleistocene are known. The evidence of Lower Palaeolithic handaxes was recovered from the basal gravel in the Dang Valley, overlain by banded alluvial clays and silt of the Babai Formation. Gudrun Corvinus’ pioneering work should be considered as the most vital development in the search for Acheulian evidence in the extra peninsular area and yet another evidence across the Movius Line that separates the chopper-chopping tool complex from the Acheulian.

Till the 1970s, the Siwalik Frontal Range was considered to represent only the chopper-chopping tool tradition. This evidence from Nepal further adds to the evidence of the Acheulian from the Punjab sub-Himalayas and reiterates the view that it is not an isolated occurrence.

The Central Himalayas

Early Palaeolithic evidence was reported from Ladakh in the Central Himalayan region. These artefacts were made from locally occurring fine grained volcanics and cherty tuffs. One site is located in the Indus Valley at Alchi Village and another is a rock-shelter at Hunder Dok in the Shyok Valley. These two finds are, however, surface occurrences. The Kashmir Valley was put on the map in the early 1970s, around Pahalgam and although some Palaeolithic artefacs were collected, later surveys have not produced additional evidence anywhere in Kashmir.

The Western Coast

Sporadic occurrence of Lower Palaeolithic artefacts were reported from the north Konkan and Goa. Lower Palaeolithic arterfacts have been documented from the Dudhsagar valley.

A quartz chopper assemblage is also reported from Kerala and a couple of bifaces have been found in coastal Karnataka. During the last three decades Lower Palaeolithic occurrences in the basal conglomerates have been reported from different sectors of the east coast, though significant data pertaining to Quaternary stratigraphy and climate is not as yet forthcoming. The region south of the Kaveri into Sri Lanka continues to draw a blank in regard to Palaeolithic occupation.

The Vindhyas: Raisen District

The richest concentration of Lower Palaeolithic scatters perhaps anywhere in the Old World is represented by the western Malwa Plateau surface sites, brought to light through the seminal research carried out by Jerome Jacobson. Jacobson took up a challenging task of revealing the potential of unburied open air stations for a systemic study. His investigations aimed at developing a methodology for treating the surface sites to be able to “…emphasise that surface archaeology can yield data virtually unattainable from buried occurrences, particularly when dealing with early Palaeolithic remains.”

A majority of 94 sites were considered to be in situ. The region in which the scatters occur is drained by a network of low order and low energy streams which could not have caused entrainment of the artefacts. The sites were found located in an area of 175 sq km on the open plains away from the perennial water courses. After plotting the artefact distribution in a systematic grid surface, sampling of the artefacts was made for a metrical analysis facilitating in a comparative study with Acheulian assemblages elsewhere in India. More than 11,000 artefacts were collected for determining the ‘inter and intra site variability and other’. A comparison with the neighbouring Bhimbetka sequence was made.

This study added a new dimension to the increasing tempo of Lower Palaeolithic studies in India, for the majority of sites in South Asia are either surface or plough-zone contexts. The potential of inland areas in search of primary context sites and that open air surface sites are as important as buried contexts was amply realized.

Excavations

The following Table gives a list of excavated Lower Palaeolithic sites in India. The region between the Narmada Valley in the north and the Kaveri in the south has widespread occurrence of Acheulian sites. A vast majority of sites numbering in several thousands are known from a variety of geologic and geomorphic basins, the Purana and Gondwana basins of India. They are known as the Vindhya, Kaladgi, Bhima, Cuddappah, Kurnool, Bastar, Chhattisgarh, etc. The excavated sites are generally grouped as primary sites, as compared to the sites along the stream beds, where the flow of water displaces the evidence from the upstream to downstream. These excavations have helped us classify sites as home bases, butchery sites, quarry sites, factory sites, etc. Excavations have been carried out at those sites where the evidence for the Palaeolithic has been found in buried context.

In South Asia systematic excavation of primary Lower Palaeolithic sites began in the 1960s, with the excavation of Chirki on Pravara by Gudrun Corvinus. With the excavations of discrete primary Lower Palaeolithic occupation sites in different parts of India and gradual availability of suitable materials for radiometric dating, it has now been possible to assign the Lower Palaeolithic to the Lower Pleistocene. Between the excavation of fluvial gravel context sites in Mayurbhanj (1948) and excavation of a buried Acheulian quarry at Isampur and at Attirampakkam in Tamil Nadu the Indian Lower Palaeolithic investigations have certainly contributed to a better understanding of Acheulian lifeway’s and hominin behaviour (Table 1)

In the following brief accounts of salient aspects of select but important excavations, carried out in the different regions of South Asia are described.

Rajasthan (western India)

Lower Palaeolithic sites are known from many sites in the region. Three sites, Jayal, Singi Talav and Didvana are important. A brief account is given below.

Jayal:

Handaxes, choppers, chopping tools, scrapers and enticulates have been reported from the gravel site at Jayal. The gravel with which the stone tools occur was the main source of raw material for making tools.

Singi Talav:

Stone tools both on the surface and in stratified context – 1.30 m below the surface. Smore than a hundred artefacts were collected from the excavation. Most of the artefacts were made from coarse grained quartzite. Artefacts such as choppers, polyhedral, bifaces were collected.

Didwana 16R:

This is a sand dune site in Rajasthan. The excavated section is representative of the aeolian member of the Didwana Formation, well exposed around the town of Didwana in Nagaur District. The formation constitutes an aeolian member and a lacustral member. The aeolian member is widespread even beyond the limits of the desert. This is one of the best studies of sand dune profiles in the Thar Desert and the excavated section (about 21 m) has been divided into three Litho Units I-III. The profile reveals five buried soils and 16 calc bands (5-20 cm). These indicate major and minor breaks in dune accumulation. Variation in colour, texture, structure and occurrence of buried soil horizons and calc bands are some of the criteria used for demarcating the litho units. Archaeological horizons date from the Acheulian to the Mesolithic.

Litho Unit I is the upper unit with a maximum thickness of 4.90 m. The upper 80 cm of this unit consists of well sorted, non-calcareous, structure less, yellowish brown fine sand. The remainder 4.10 m deposit is characterized by structure less loose sand with dispersed calcrete nodules. Litho Units I and II are separated by a 10 cm deposit of well-rounded coarse sand mixed with angular and sub angular rock fragments. This sediment is interpreted as a colluvial wash.

Litho Unit II measures 6.10 m in total thickness. It is a mass of structure less calcareous fine sand with a dense distribution of calcrete nodules. Calc bands are 3-5 cm in thickness. A 30 sq m trench into this deposit yielded a rich assemblage of blade and flake tools, with a few handaxes at its base.

Litho Unit III measures 10.95 m. Seven calc bands (5-20 cm) occur at various depths in this unit. The upper part of this unit yielded a Middle Palaeolithic assemblage and further down towards its base suspected Acheulian artefacts were collected. The litho unit shows interruptions in sand deposition in the form of colluvial wash deposits.

Orissa (eastern India)

Mayurbhanj: Early days of India’s Independence witnessed a major step forward in the study of Lower Palaeolithic sites. The first of these was the publication of ‘Excavation in Mayurbhanj’ by Bose and Sen in 1948. A decade long research in this region identified problems for a proper understanding of the geological context and the typological sequence of the Palaeolithic industry culminating in the excavation for the first time of a Lower Palaeolithic site. The problem of laterite (whether it is primary or secondary) and its relationship with the early human occupation and whether the evidence is from a primary factory site or from a depositional context in a secondary context loomed large. Excavations at Kamarpal-on-Burhabalang and Kuliana in laterite addressed these problems. Problem oriented excavations as envisaged by Wheeler were not limited to later prehistoric sites alone.

A series of eight localities were excavated, among them Kuliana tank A and B, Kamata quarry, C. Kolobaria yielded adequate lithic assemblages. Both surface and from excavation as many as 700 tools were collected for a typo-technological analysis. The excavators identified three broad stages of lithic evolution from cobble/pebble tools to fine handaxes through a stage of crude handaxes. The majority of the artefacts were made from quartzite. In a way this assemblage was compared to the lithic evolutionary sequence in Africa. The stone tools coming from the boulder conglomerate was considered the oldest of which the majority of the artefacts were from cobbles and pebbles followed by crude handaxes and finely made handaxes. The assemblage from the boulder conglomerate did not contain any handaxe.

Madhya Pradesh (Raisen District)

Bhimbekta: Rock-shelter IIIF-23 is situated about 45 km south of Bhopal, the state capital of Madhya Pradesh. Between 1972 and 1977, V.N. Misra conducted several seasons of excavation in this rock-shelter and also IIF-24 which produced a sequence from the Lower Palaeolithic to Mesolithic and IIA-29 and IIA-30 produced only the Acheulian occupational evidence.

Rock-shelter IIIF-23 is the largest of the rock-shelters at Bhimbetka with a 3.80 m thick depositional sequence of Palaeolithic cultures. The deposit was divided into 8 levels with the following succession of lithic industries (Table 2).

Table 2: Stratigraphy and culture succession at IIIF-23 (after Misra 1978)

The Lower Palaeolithic occurs over an area of 26 sq m and through 2.4 m deposit from the bottom, towards the inner part of the shelter. This deposit has yielded 4705 artefacts made from the locally occurring ortho-quartzites and some introduced varieties of sandstones. That the tool making took place in the shelter is indicated by the presence of debitage well up to two-thirds of the collection. Over 60% of the collection is represented by the Acheulian bifaces and cleavers, and in addition flake tools such as notches, denticulate scrapers and knives have been identified.

Tikoda

One of richest concentration of Acheulian artefacts was reported in Raisen district by Jacobson in 1975 who argued that these are surface sites. On the contrary our recent investigations of the Acheulian localities near Tikoda village confirm that Acheulian artefacts are eroding out of more than 10 meter thick sedimentary context. Large numbers of Acheulian artefacts were found in clusters within a small area forming a definite geographical unit.

The ‘V’ shaped valley is a distinctive feature of the study area. It is enclosed by low-lying Narwar-Tikoda ridge on one side; the other side opens into a broad river valley. The ‘V’ shaped valley floor has preserved a thick sedimentary deposit and gives appearance of badland topography. The average elevation of this valley floor ranges from 465 to 440 m ASL. Seasonal streamlets drain the valley and erode the thick sediments.

The various distinct concentrations of lithic scatter within the area are designated as ‘locality’. So far eight localities have been located in the area confined to southern slope and ‘V’ shaped valley of Tikoda hill. These localities have been named as TKD-I to TKD-VIII.

Acheulian artefacts are found in varied geological contexts such as sandstone bed rock, yellow alluvial sediment, secondary laterite, alluvial clay sediment, weathered basalt surface and black sediment.

Systematic surface collection and excavations revealed that there are at least two levels of Acheulian occupation. Preliminary study of artefact assemblage indicates that the assemblage is overwhelmingly dominated by cleavers. Presence of giant cores in large number is one of the important features of the lithic assemblage.

Maihar

The Lower Palaeolithic scatter was noticed at Maihar I in 1975. A dense scatter yielded hundreds of tools prompting prospecting for the buried evidence. This is one of the series of localities, representing pre-Neolithic occupations, around the town of Miahar in Satna District of Madhya Pradesh. Artefact distribution was recorded from both the banks of the Nala draining into the Lilji River.

A test pit going to a depth of 1.75 m could be divided into three layers. Layer 3 at the bottom was further divided into two units. These two units put together yielded an undisturbed horizon of Acheulian artefacts, necessitating further expansion of the trenches. The excavated area exposed the components of workshop-cum-occupation floor, anvils, hammer stones, flakes, debitage, tools at various stages of manufacture and an artificial stone alignment/enclosure. All this evidence warrants further excavation for a detailed reconstruction of the life ways of the Acheulian occupants. The majority of the artefacts were made from quartzite with sandstone artefacts forming a minority, comprising a variety of types of the Acheulian techno-complex.

The Son and Belan Valleys:

Alluvial sections in the Son and Belan valleys in the northern part of the Vindhya Basin in Madhya Pradesh have been known for the rich occurrence of Palaeolithic artefacts. The river deposits have been divided into several formations: Sihawal, Patpara, Baghor and Khetauni formations. The Lower Palaeolithic artefacts occur in the Sihawal formation, which is overlain by the Middle Palaeolithic bearing Patpara formation.

Maharashtra (western Deccan)

Chirki-on-Pravara: In the context of Lower Palaeolithic studies the excavations carried out by Gudrun Corvinus marked the new beginning of excavation of Lower Palaeolithic sites in South Asia. During the first season of work at Chirki, Corvinus dug several trenches and am ong them the VII trench was most productive:

“A seventh trench dug half a kilometer north of the first excavation, revealed a boulder horizon containing many Early Palaeolithic tools. The horizon only 10-40 cm thick, lies directly on bedrock and is overlain by a 60-1 m thick layer of gravelly brown soil.

When the horizon was completely exposed it was found to contain 694 implements of Series I. Both the quantity of tools and their distribution suggest that the site was a factory. A particularly heavy concentration of finished and unfinished tools in the southern part of the trench suggest that this was the location of the workshop” (Corvinus 1968: 218).

For five seasons Corvinus excavated at Chirki and exposed an occupation floor of the Acheulian culture. The Acheulian occupation took place on the boulder surface of the terrace where the tool manufacturing was performed. The raw material was procured from the local outcrops of basalts as well as quartz and chalcedony which came in handy from the bed of the river Pravara. As many as 2050 artefacts were recovered from the excavation, suggestive of the intensity and density of occupation at the excavated spots. In addition to six articles Corvinus published two volumes on the Quaternary Geology and Prehistory of the Pravara Valley. The calcite cement from one of the Acheulian yielding gravels at Nevasa gave a U/Th age of >400 ka.

Karnataka (southern Deccan)

The Kaladgi Basin sites are known from the time Robert Bruce Foote. Later investigators have added considerably to our understanding of the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic of the region. Intensve foot survey of the rivers valleys and the inland region of the basin has yielded nearly 400 Palaeolithic sites, mainly Lower and Middle Palaeolithic. Sites have been found in a variety of geomorphic contexts – high level alluvial gravel sites, piedmont surface sites, pediment sites, etc. Factory sites are found near outcrops of raw material, generally quartzite.

Anagwadi: This is a Lower Palaeolithic gravel conglomerate site excavated by R.S. Pappu in 1964-65 for a better understanding of the geological context of the Acheulian artefacts. The site is situated on the north bank of the river Ghataprabha in the Kaladgi Basin of northern Karnataka. The landscape is densely covered with the artefact scatter and the excavations were conducted in the gravel conglomerate (about 50 cm thick) set in a ferruginous matrix exposed in a Nala draining into the Ghataprabha River. The geomorphic context of the site (s) in this region is similar to the Malaprabha Valley. According to the excavator, the excavation revealed an assemblage of handaxes and cleavers in a semi-primary context. More than 500 artefacts were collected by R. S. Pappu during the course of his investigation at the site. 95% of artefacts were made of quartzite, chert and sandstone artefacts constitute the rest. Majority of artefacts were made from rounded pebbles.

Lakhmapur: Following R.S. Pappu’s work at Anagwadi, geomorphic investigations were coupled with the study of Acheulian and Middle Palaeolithic contexts around Lakhmapur village in the Kaladgi Basin by Korisettar and colleagues. The aretfacts are associated with both coalescent piedmont fans and buried stone lines. The artefacts horizons occur in buried contexts and are separated from one another stratigraphically. Evidence of extinct spring activity (spring tufa) in the vicinity of artefact horizon was documented. This explains the location of hominin activity in the region. A couple of hundred artefacts of quartzite were documented from the excavations.

Hunsgi-Baichbal valleys: The Hunsgi-Baichbal Valley Lower Palaeolithic archaeology has brought to light as many as two hundred twenty sites, situated in an erosional basin lying on the south-eastern margin of the Deccan Volcanic Province (Shorapur Doab, Gulbarga District, Karnataka). The basin is currently drained by numerous rivulets which combine at various points on the valley floor to give rise to the Hunsgi Nala, a feeder on the northern bank of the Krishna River. The Baichbal Nala is a tributary of the Hunsgi Nala. Almost all the Lower Palaeolithic sites are situated between the valley floor and the surrounding foothill regions.

Prolonged and consistent investigations by K. Paddayya since 1965 has realized in the documentation and excavation of a range of archaeological sites including the Lower Palaeolithic in the Shorapur Doab. Excavations and other related interdisciplinary investigations of the Acheulian localities is of profound importance in our understanding of the earliest phase of occupation in Peninsular India. The publication ‘Acheulian Culture of the Hunsgi Valley: a Settlement Systems Perspective’ includes the results of excavation of Acheulian localities (Locality V and VI) and a thorough documentation of environmental resources and the distribution pattern of Acheulian localities in a variety of geomorphic contexts within the Hunsgi Valley: the non-fluviatile contexts were considered primary; the cultural deposit though within the plough-zone measured up to 25 cm in thickness, in turn capped by soil of about 50 cm thickness. The large body of scientific data emerging from the field work facilitated in the reconstruction of the Acheulian culture of the valley in a systemic perspective. The settlement systems model envisaged seasonal mobility of the hominids between wet season dispersal across the basin and dry season aggregation on the arterial stream, conditioned by the seasonal availability of food resources.

In the northern Baichbal Valley scores of Acheulian of sites were documented and among them Yediyapur (Locality VI) was excavated. This excavation laid greater emphasis on the relation of artefact scatters to stream channels, piedmont zones, local geology, topographic features and the associated sediments were chief aspects of documentation.

The artefact clusters at all the Acheulian stations were composed of typical assemblages including handaxes, cleavers, choppers, knives, polyhedrons, picks, scrapers, etc. and basically revealed the use of locally occurring raw material, limestone in the majority of cases and other rock types such as granite, quartzite, basalt, dolerite, etc. Employment of both hard and soft hammer technique was evident. Artefact clusters and their proximity to outcrops of rocks have been identified as a cache or a quarry.

Isampur

K. Paddayya’s prolonged research in the region was rewarded with the discovery of a Lower Palaeolithic context with unmistakable evidence for a quarry site in a buried context. The excavations at Isampur in the Hunsgi Valley have revealed that hominins exploited the limestone outcrops as raw material quarries. As revealed by the large flakes and cores of limestone the handaxes and cleavers and other tools types were manufactured at the spot revealing the processing sequence in an undisturbed context. This site has been dated to 1.2 Myr.

The site has been described as the oldest quarry site yet known in the old world. The site was first discovered in 1994 and was excavated between 1997 and 2000. It covers an area of 0.75 hectares and is spread over four localities and the artefact horizon is scattered over eroded outcrop of hard limestone. A 100 m2 area has been excavated in three units to a depth of 40-50 cm from the surface. Artefacts occur at three horizons: 20-30, 30-40, 40-50 below the surface. There are seven clusters of artefacts and many lying on the bedrock limestone. More than 15000 artefacts have been documented which reveal all stages of stone tool manufacture, from the initial roughing-out of limestone tabular pieces to final flaking of tools. Along with finished artefacts there is high proportion of cores and waste products. There is a great variety of waste products, a large number of hammer stones of quartzite, chert, basalt, etc. The bedrock blocks also show evidence of detachment of large flakes along the perimeter. All these put together clearly help in identifying the site as a quarry site

Tamil Nadu

Attirampakkam: Located in the Kortalayar river basin, Attirampakkam is a rich site with a sequence of lower, middle and upper Palaeolithic cultures. Discovered in 1863 by Robert Bruce Foote and subject to many excavations, the Acheulian artefacts here, come from the 4m thick shale clay horizon. They include mostly handaxes on non-local quartzite indicating that complete tools were brought here from elsewhere. This occupation level showed advanced Acheulian characters with mainly handaxes and cleavers. A set of animal footprints and hoof prints as well as three animal fossil teeth were found in association with this phase.

S. Pappu has been carrying out intensive research on various aspects of the Acheulian culture of the Kortallayar valley during the last two decades. Her work has produced the first and the oldest absolute for the Acheulian in the Indian subcontinent.

The geology of the region where the Acheulian localities are located is Upper Gondwana formations comprising quartzites, sandstone and shales. These rocks are generally covered by Quaternary ferricretes and ferricritised gravels. Older ferricretes contain Lower and Middle palaeolithic tools and microliths.

6. Discussion

The Lower Palaeolithic cultural remains preceding the Middle Palaeolithic stratigraphically, has a wide distribution, occurring in both peri-glacial sub Himalayan regions to coastal areas in Tamil Nadu besides major river basins and rock shelters.

In the following a summary of multidisciplinary investigations in the context of theLower Palaeolithic in India given.

Palaeo climate, fauna and other associated evidence

Nagarjunakonda has given an evidence of three alternating wet and dry cycles of palaeo climate. Faunal remains in the form of fossil teeth of horse, water buffalo and nilgai (suggesting an open and wet landscape) as well as 17 animal round foot prints and hoof prints have been evidenced from Attirampakkam. From Narmada, associated fossil remains of Elephas namadicus, Stegodon ganesa, Bos namadicus, Equus namadicus etc have been recovered.

A possible temporary shelter, deduced in the form of its supports, huge granite blocks arranged around a 63 sq m area comes from Hungsi.

Typo-technology

A survey of the published literature reveals that since the early days of palaeolithic research in India efforts draw parallels between the Lower Palaeolithic industries of India and Europe and later with the African material. This implied contemporaneity of the two tool industries. Similarly typo-technological sequences were also compared. In addition to the Soanian and Madrasian dichotomy, with the growing body of artefactual data, two broad stages of evolution, Early and Late Acheulian, and sometimes Middle Acheulian, in the handaxe cleaver techno complex comparable to the African sequence were also recognized. However, it should be noted that stratigraphical evidence of this is as yet not forthcoming from the excavations carried out so far.

Two broad phases within the Indian Acheulian industries are (a) Early Acheulian and (b) Late Acheulian. Some of the excavated sites such as Isampur, Hunsgi, Adamgarh, Kuliana, and Chirki-Nevasa were assigned to the first or the older group: the assemblages were comprised of high percentage of chopper and chopping tools and bifaces and low percentage of non-bifacial flake tools, low proportion of Levallois flakes and the use of hard hammer technique. The absence of chopper-chopping tools, low percentage of bifaces and high ratio of cleavers to handaxes and a large variety of non-biface flakes and the predominance of soft hammer technique indicated its Late Acheulian character.

Large Flake Acheulian?

One hundred and fifty years of Acheulian research in India, including several e xtensive surveys and select excavations, have revealed numerous sites across the subcontinent, particularly in semi-arid areas like the Deccan Plateau. For over 1.5 million years across Africa, the Middle East, Western Europe and the Indian Subcontinent, Acheulian hominins produced bifacial, shaped stone tools, principally of two types: handaxes and cleavers.

One of the most distinctive features of the Indian Acheulian is that it has the highest proportion of cleavers known anywhere in the world. At sites like Morgaon, Tikoda, and Bhimbetka III F-23 cleavers greatly outnumber handaxes. Currently there is a discussion among archaeologists whether the Indian Acheulian can be categorized as the Large Flake Acheulian. This is a distinctive Middle Acheulian facies documented in the Levant and northern Arabia, dated to between 800 and 700 thousand years ago, and was based on the production of large flake blanks from coarse-grained material. As this Large Flake Acheulian resembles contemporary African assemblages it is thought to represent another dispersal out of Africa. In India however, large flake blanks are known from the earliest Acheulian at Attirampakkam. At the 1.21 million year old site of Isampur, quarry cleavers are made on flake blanks while handaxes are made on slabs. The dominance of flake blanks may be more a reflection of the dominance of cleavers in India rather than the influence of the Large Flake Acheulian, as it is very difficult to make a cleaver on a cobble or slab blank. Late Acheulian sites in the vicinity of Isampur Quarry feature both handaxes and cleavers largely made on flakes, but this is a younger context and makes it difficult to represent the Large Flake Acheulian. It should also be noted that very few Indian assemblages feature bifaces as elongate as African ones, suggesting that the Indian Acheulian may have constituted a divergent tradition that was not influenced by dispersals after the initial Acheulian diaspora.

Transition to the Middle Palaeolithic

The Late Acheulian in India is characterized by the gradual reduction of biface size, and increased frequencies of scrapers and small prepared cores. Acheulian industries with small prepared cores have been documented at Bhimbetka III, the Beas -Berach complex, Bariapur, and Lakhmapur West; while small bifaces occur alongside Middle Palaeolithic technology at Lakhmapur East, the Orsang Valley, Naryana Nellore, and the Kortalayar Basin. It has been observed that in the Hunsgi-Baichbal Valley the stratigraphically youngest Acheulian sites have small bifaces of fine workmanship, often made on thin flake blanks. Cores for the production of biface blanks were found at the site of Kolihal, which resemble large Levallois cores in many respects: they are circular, with an upper flat, shaped flaking surface, and a lower platform surface with large preferential flakes removed.

Chronology

Establishing chronology of Prehistory is the most important task of the prehistorian for which he depends on scientific methods. There are two different ways of determining the age of Stone Age sites: Relative dating and Absolute dating. The latter provides the dates in terms of calendrical dates and gives us a fairly good idea of the age of Palaeolithic occupation at a given site. This is based on radiometric methods. Relative dating is based on classification of tool on the basis of technology, stratigraphy and some ratio of chemical constituents in the fossil bones associated with stone tools.

Relative age estimates for Palaeolithic assemblages was made by means of weathering indices of rocks and gravels from which Palaeolithic tools were recovered. The rarity of Early Acheulian sites in the Deccan Trap region was governed by the state of preservation of the artefacts. Those in a buried context were preserved unaltered and those remaining exposed on the surface were subject to in situ weathering resulting in the loss of the archaeological record. The majority of the Acheulian surface sites belong to the Late Acheulian irrespective of the geological context. This inference is complimented by the fact that most of the buried Acheulian sites show Early Acheulian characteristics.

In the Godavari fossil bones of animals have been found in association with either the Lower Palaeolithic or the ‘Middle Stone Age’ tools. In the Tungabhadra Valley at Nittur Lower Palaeolithic tools occur in association with cattle and Elephant bones (Bos namadicus, Elephas). At some sections in the Pravara Valley around Nevasa, fossil remains of Elephas, Bos and Equus were found together with both Early and Middle Palaeolithic tools. These reports clearly revealed the time transgressive nature of these animal species and the lack of index fossils of the Middle Pleistocene and therefore Lower Palaeolithic came to be assigned to both Middle and Late Pleistocene, implying a late survival of the Lower Palaeolithic in Peninsular India.

This confusion in using fossil animal bones for dating was overcome to some extent by the application of the chemical dating method based on fluorine/phosphate ratios. This method has been particularly useful in separating the Early and Late Acheulian assemblages and in assessing the primary or secondary context of the fossil bones. For instance, fossil bones associated with Acheulian artefacts from Shirguppi in the Krishna Valley (north Karnataka) gave an anomalous f/p ratio ranging from 4.44 to 6.29 coming from a deposit generally falling within the Late Pleistocene. The Early and Late Acheulian in the Hunsgi-Baichbal Valleys was distinguishable on a typo-technological basis further supported by the f/p ratios for the associated fossil animal bones. The Early Acheulian is associated with fossils bones showing a ratio of 6.8 (Middle Pleistocene) and Late Acheulian associated bones revealed a ratio of 5.6.

Absolute dating

Electron Spin Resonance (ESR), Potassium-Argon (K-Ar) and Uranium series dating have been helpful in dating older sites of the Palaeolithic. Uranium-Thorium dates for the Acheulian bearing calcrete with cemented conglomerates from Nevasa (Pravara Basin), Yedurwadi (Krishna Basin), and Bori (Bhima Basin) are suggestive of Late Middle Pleistocene age (200,000 years ago). Hunsgi Valley sites have been dated by Uranium-Thorium dates, ranging in age at about 300,000 years ago. Other chemical dating methods providing relative age estimates have also been applied and these support the Uranium series and Radiocarbon dates.

While Attirampakkam has an absolute date of 1.5 Myr, the site of Isampur in the Hunsgi Valley has a date of 1.2 Myr that establishes the early exit of Homo erectus out of Africa into the Indian subcontinent. They are the oldest dated sites in the Indian subcontinent.

7. Conclusion

The Lower Palaeolithic evidence from the Indian subcontinent has been studied by a multitude of scholars during the last hundred and fifty years and more. Approach to the study has also been shifting its emphasis from time to time. Recent dating efforts have provided clear evidence of very early colonization of the Lower Palaeolithic hominins from Africa. The first major expansion of hominins out of Africa is referred to as Out of Africa I, associated with the expansion of Homo erectus out of Africa. Though the survey and excavations have not as yet produced evidence of hominin fossils, the comparative typo-technological studies of Acheulian industries from India and Africa have been carried out. The emergence of Acheulian technology is ascribed to Homo erectus. Hence the occurrence of Acheulian assemblages elsewhere in the old world is attributed to expanding Homo erectus out of Africa. The absolute date for the Acheulian at Attirampakkam in Tamil Nadu places this expansion in the Lower Pleistocene (around 1.5 million years ago). The distribution pattern of Lower Palaeolithic sites in peninsular India indicates the presence of core areas of habitation. These are identified on the basis of dense distribution of sites within the well defined geological basins, such as the Purana and Gondwana basins. This dense occurrence is attributed to the co-occurrence of perennial raw material resources, high plant and animal biomass, and active springs. In addition the relatively sparse distribution of such sites is also documented from peripheral zones. And some areas are devoid of any evidence of Lower Palaeolithic settlements, for e.g. the Ganga valley alluvial basin, the region south of the Kaveri river in south India and northeast highlands. Detailed study of technology, man-land relationships at select sites are under way. The Lower Paleolithic assemblages are comparable to those in Africa and the Levant. In the subcontinent they have a widespread distribution from north Pakistan to southeast coast of India, and in Nepal. As mentioned above the main type of artefacts are handaxes, cleavers, choppers, scrapers, discoids, polyhedrons, etc. They were made from locally occurring raw materials such as quartzite, limestone, chert, etc.

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