14 Upper Palaeolithic Cultures

Introduction

In the Indian Stone Age terminology, the sub-division of the Palaeolithic was made in accordance with European framework by matching the typo-technological aspects of the lithic industries. This had given rise to identifying the Upper Paleolithic gap in the Indian Stone Age sequence. Some scholars like B. Subbarao had argued that Indian Stone Age is comparable to the African and so the Palaeolithic in Indian has two sub-divisions and therefore Early, Middle and Late Stone ages are to be recognized as comparable to Palaeolithic and Mesolithic stages.

In the 1970s a new group of sites with elongated blades came to be reported from across the Indian subcontinent. Some were stratified sites, with bone tools and with evidence for art. Some of the stratified sites were radiometrically dated. At the same time several scholars also reported the occurrence of microlithic assemblage’s of Late Pleistocene age. This parallel evidence was not taken into consideration to include them as Upper Palaeolithic, but some were called Epi-Palaeolithic.

In the last two decades there is convincing evidence that microlithic assemblages constitute the Upper Palaeolithic India and they date back to 50,000 years ago. They occur in the context of rock shelters and open air sites. The Upper Palaeolithic is typically defined as assemblages containing higher proportions of blades or ‘flake-blades’ with many small retouched tools and a general lack of Levalloisian or Radial Core technology. Sri Lanka has the earliest well dated Upper Palaeolithic sites along with hominin remains and microlithic assemblages. Such evidence in the rock shelters of central and southern Indian are now being reported. The Sri Lankan sites are relevant for understanding the emergence of modern human behavior in South Asia.

In Western Europe and parts of northern Asia the beginning of the Upper Palaeolithic is attributed to the arrival of Homo sapiens, but this is hotly debated in Arabia and South Asia. Microlithic assemblages also sometimes contain bone tools, and incised Ostrich eggshell and seashell beads, such as at Jwalapuram9; Batadomba-Lena and Fa Hien Cave and Patne. The shift towards microlithic technologies in India is often characterised by increasing symmetry in artefacts, decreasing size in cores and flakes, and an increasing preference for cryptocrystalline materials.

Who were the authors of the Upper Palaeolithic?

The Upper Palaeolithic is the handiwork of the anatomically modern man, Homo sapiens. It succeeds the Middle Palaeolithic and precedes the Mesolithic. There is a shift in stone tool technology as well bone tool technology. Art was a significant activity of the Upper Palaeolithic people, symbolic of modern human behaviour.

Ecological Settings

The Upper Palaeolithic populations occupied varied ecological settings – arid zones in the North-west India, semi-arid zones in North and Central India and humid to sub-humid regions in South-east India. These include hilltops, hill slopes, foothill, areas, plains, plateaus, in woodland, savanna woodland and thorny thicket zones near small stream courses as also away from the major rivers in the forested hills like the Nallamalais of the Eastern Ghats where the source of water is mainly springs. The same source is being used by the contemporary simple societies.

2. Early Discoveries

In India, evidence for a blade and burin complex was found during the nineteenth century. Newbold (1844) reported osseous, endogenic limestone caves in Kurnool District of Andhra Pradesh. Robert Bruce Foote and his son Henry Bruce Foote excavated Billasurgam Cave near Betamcherla and recovered bone tools recalling those of the Magdalenian of France.

Upper Palaeolithic stone tools including blade tools and burins from Gundla Brahmeshwaram and Nandikanama pass areas in the Nallamalais of the Krishna Valley in Andhra Pradesh were collected in the early part of the 20th century. These were classified as Series I to IV equivalent to Lower, Middle and Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic respectively.

3. Tools, Technology and Raw materials

The material cultural remains of the Upper Palaeolithic consists of lithic artefacts from most of the sites and bone tools from Kurnool caves and the Godavarikhani open air site from Karimnagar District of Telangana State in the Godavari Valley. These assemblages are characterized essentially by lithic blades and blade tools, flakes, flake-blades, backed blades, burins and other categories.

The finished tools comprise artefacts showing deliberate modification and/or retouch. These include single side scraper (straight, convex, concave), double side scraper (straight, straight and convex straight and concave, biconvex, concave and convex), end scraper, side and end scraper, perimetal scraper, steep scraper, notched scraper, core scraper, knife (prepared back, natural back), denticulate, small chopper, burin (on blade, flake, tanged core), unilateral and bilateral points, unifacial, bifacial, and tanged points on flakes, blades and nuclei. Backed points (straight back, curved back, crescentic, lunate and triangle (scalene, isosceles and equilateral).

The debitage comprises the artefacts resulting from the process of tool making. These include complete and broken blades, levallois flakes, plain flakes (side struck, end struck and indeterminate), core rejuvenation flakes, chips, flake cores (globular, pyramidal, discoidal and amorphous), blade cores (unidirectional, bi-directional, multi-directional) and worked nodules.

The other categories include natural blocks, nodules and cobbles used as hammer stones, anvils, bored stones and flat grind stones/slabs.

As stated already, considerable variation among lithic artefact assemblages exists among sites from different regions. Medium to fine grained quartzite of different shades is the chief raw material used for tools at sites from the southeast coast and central India.

Both crystal and vein quartz is used at some sites – specially the Gunjana Valley in Cuddapah District and Renigunta area in Chittoor District where black lydianite is also an important raw material. Limestone, cherty limestone and even compact shale has been used in Kurnool cave areas. Jasper and agate are used.

Bone tools have been reported from Kurnool caves and Godavari Khani open air site in Karimnagar District of Andhra Pradesh. The bone tools from Kurnool areas are described as scrapers, perforators, chisels, scoops, shouldered points, barbs, spatulae, worked bones, bone blanks, broken and cut bones and splinters. Those recovered by Foote from Billasurgum Cave excavations (which were reported to have been lost subsequently during transport to England) are described as awls, barbed and unbarbed arrow heads, daggers, scraper knives, scrapers, chisels, gouge, wedges, axe-heads and sockets which were compared with the Magdalenian types of France. T.R.R. Singh describes the Godavarikhani bone tools as points, perforators, tanged arrow heads, chisels, scrapers, single shouldered points and worked bone.

4. Associated Fauna

Fossil faunal remains of Canis sp. Bos namadicus, Bubalus sp. Cervus sp. Hexaprotodon palaeindicus and Ostrich egg-shells are reported along with Upper Palaeolithic artefacts. From Kurnool caves and Muchchatla Chintamanu Gavi, faunal remains of porcupine, bandicoot rat, civet, hyena, wild boar, many deer species like mouse deer, sambar deer, barking deer, grey langur, baboon, rhinoceros, giant pangolin etc. have been found.

5. Palaeoenvironment and Ecology

Palaeoclimatic research including geomorphology, sedimentology, pedology, radiometric dating such as TL and 14C in different parts of India shows that there was intense glaciation in high altitudes and severe aridity in much of the Peninsular India, Northeast India and the Southeast coast. Fossil faunal remains including Canis sp. Equus namadicus, Elephas sp., Bubalus sp. Cervus sp. Bos namadicus, Hexaprotodon palaeindicus recovered from the Mahanadi, Manjra, Godavari, Ghod and Krishna valleys indicate a grassland ecosystem with some forest cover and swamps and pools. The recovery of Ostrich egg-shells along with Upper Palaeolithic tools from several sites in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan indicates arid climate during the Late Pleistocene.

Many of the wild species of animals present during Late Pleistocene continue to survive in the present time in the dry deciduous zones in different parts of the country. There seems to have been changes in the behaviour of the monsoons. Differences between 160/18 0 ratios of planktonic foraminifera deposited during the Last Glacial Maximum about 18,000 years ago and those deposited during the Holocene show that in the Indian Ocean the South-West monsoon was weaker than it is today and that the North-East monsoon was stronger.

6. Discovery of an Upper Palaeolithic Hearth

Apart from the recovery of lithic and bone tools along with Late Pleistocene fauna, in the Kurnool caves, an Upper Palaeolithic fire place has been dated to 17,390 years B.P. In the excavation of a cave complex known as Muchchatla Chintamanu Gavi evidence of fire activity is reported from 1.35 m downwards in the intermittent ash patches. The structure of the fire place is apparent between 1.50 m and 1.85 m. It is described as follows:

“This fire place seemingly made by arranging limestone boulders in a horse shoe shape fashion, measured 1.6 m at its maximum length with a maximum interior breadth of 0.70 m. Within the confines of the fire place especially in 1. 5 m – 1.85 m level occurred burnt bone fragments which are completely lithified due to long association with the carbonate rich cave sediments, burnt chunks of limestone and clayey-loam and nuclei and nodules of green coloured chert. This fire place evidently was used continuously for roasting meat and fire treatment of chert nodules for production of artefacts”.

The authors interpret that this fire place was used for roasting meat foods as the present-day Yerukalas in the vicinity do as also for heat treatment of raw materials for producing lithic artefacts.

7. Art

Besides stone and bone tools as the material cultural remains, there is some evidence of aesthetic sense, abstract thinking and signs of religion among Upper Palaeolithic populations from some parts of India. Bone work on mobile art represented by Venuses as symbols of fertility and of mother goddesses, parietal art in the form of engravings and cave paintings have been documented, in Central and Southern India.

Beads were reported as the first evidence for art in the Upper Palaeolithic levels at Patne in Jalgaon District of Maharashtra. Two beads and two bead blanks were found in Phase II D and E which were correlated with Upper Palaeolithic faunal remains. The beads consisted of an Ostrich egg-shell bead and two blanks of the same material in Phase II D and a marine shell bead in Phase II E. Besides one finished and two unfinished beads of Ostrich egg-shell and one head of shell of estuarine origin and Oliva species were found in Phase II D and E respectively. Etched Ostrich egg-shell fragments have been reported from the Upper Palaeolithic site near Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh.

8. Life-Ways

From the foregoing account, an attempt may be made to reconstruct the life ways of the Upper Palaeolithic populations in India. No human skeletal remains have been unearthed so far for this period which ranges from c. 40,000 years B.P. to 10,000 years B.P. with regional variations. These hunter-gatherers had the knowledge of fire making for cooking and for production of artefacts.

A number of flat grindstones, bored stones and anvils recovered from the Gunjana Valley in Andhra Pradesh and by others in the adjoining areas implies knowledge of processing vegetal foods like wild grains, and fishing activities as the bored stones would have been used as net sinkers as is done by the present-day food gatherer like Yanadis in the area.

The probable functional attributes of the stone artefacts like various types of scrapers, backed blade variants, etc. for wood working, bamboo working and cord work, and the ethnographic evidence suggests that bow and arrow and prototypes of various traps, snares and nets were in vogue.

The settlements are more extensive in Southeast India than in other parts as indicated by the density of the sites. The Early Holocene Mesolithic settlements represented by microliths on the other hand present a contrasting picture with sites being denser in the Northwest and Central India than Southeast India. This aspect needs to be investigated.

9. Important Sites

Upper Palaeolithic open air sites:

• Nagarjuna Konda, sites around Renigunta, Vemula and Yerragondapalem in Andhra Pradesh.
• Salvadgi and Meralbhavi in Karnataka.
• Dhavalpuri, Chirki and Pitalkora in Maharashtra.
• Mehtakheri in the Narmada Valley.
• Gunjana Valley sites in Andhra Pradesh.

Stratified sites:

• Shorapur Doab in Karnataka.
• Sites from Kurnool and Chittoor districts.
• Nevasa on the Pravara.
• Belphandhari -on – Godavari, Inamgaon-on-Ghod, the sites on the Jharpat Nala in the Wardha Basin, Patne, Bhadne, Gondas and several others in the Central Tapi Basin in Maharashtra.

Rock shelter and Cave Sites:

• Bhimbetka.
• Jwalapuram.
• Batadomba Lena (Sri Lanka).
• Fa Hien (Sri Lanka).

10.  Alluvial Sites in other parts of South India

Wainganga, Narmada and Indravati Valley, Madhya Pradesh.

Sites occur on the eroded silt and gravel deposits and also in stratified deposits in caves or rock-shelters. These suggest that the stream channels were fully utilized by the Upper Palaeolithic groups for raw material for tools and suitable hunting grounds. Molluscan shells and Ostrich egg-shells occur in association with lithic artefacts.

Tapi, Pravara, Bhima, Godavari, Krishna and Penna Valleys.

In western India the occurrence of Upper Palaeolithic sites is limited. Budha Pushkar, Sojat, Janana and Didwana are the sites. Artefacts occur on sand dunes with moderately pedogenized sand with concentration of Kanakr. Sites occur sparsely on hill slopes, foot hills, gravel horizons of small streams and fluvial deposits. The limestone caves in the Kurnool District have shown evidence of stone and bone tools and Late Pleistocene fauna. There is a concentration of sites around Hunsgi Nala and its environs in the gravel and colluvial deposits.

Upper Palaeolithic with microlithic industries are now well recognized in different parts of India: occurring in the Belan Valley in Uttar Pradesh; Panchpir in Orissa; Chittoor and Kurnool in Andhra Pradesh; Shorapur Doab in Karnataka; Visadie in Gujarat; Patne in Maharashtra; Bhimbetka Rock shelter and the Son Valley in Madhya Pradesh; Bagor in Rajasthan; Kattara in West Bengal; and Batadomba Lena and Fahien Cave in Sri Lanka. In addition to mic roblade, flake-blades, backed artefacts, burins and diminutive scraper types, the Upper Palaeolithic assemblages also contain backed microliths.

Patne

Located in the district of Jalgaon in Maharashtra, this site was excavated by S.A. Sali in 1972-73. This revealed a succession of Middle Palaeolithic, Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic cultures. The Upper Palaeolithic cultural remains dominated by blades and burins or tools made on blades were recovered from the aeolian and fluvial deposits. Fresh water shells, fragmentary unidentified animal bones and beads were found in association. Upper Palaeolithic which formed the Period II were divided into five phases on the basis of stratigraphy, and tools classes. These were again grouped into. Early Upper Palaeolithic (IIA, B) and Late Upper Palaeolithic (IIC, D, E).

Early Upper Palaeolithic phase differed from the Late Upper Palaeolithic phase in the different preferential raw materials (locally available in nearby Deccan Trap as veins or lenticular patches), tool varieties and sizes. While a semi-arid climate has been postulated for the former which had Jasper as the main raw material, a stagnant water condition is reflected in the strata of the latter with fissured clay (IIC). The latter phase showed a shift to Chalcedony for making the tools, which included new varieties like semi-geometric lunates and geometric triangles and trapezes, reaching almost microlithic proportions.

Indirect percussion or punch technique and crested ridge technique were used to make points (obliquely blunted, backed, tanged), scrapers on blades (mostly end scrapers), burins on core, blade and flakes with varieties like polyhedral, screw driver core and flat types. A few stone saddle querns with smooth oval depressions on top and oval and round mullers or rubbers (Phase IID) were recovered.

Another important finding, a direct evidence of Upper Palaeolithic art was discovered from this site. Among hundreds of Ostrich egg shell pieces, three engraved pieces with criss cross designs between horizontal lines besides beads of the same. One bead of estuarine Oliva species shell was also found. This site has been dated 35000 years B.P to 10,000 years B.P.

Eastern Ghats

The Upper Palaeolithic industry with blunted back blades is an important tool c omponent in the Upper Palaeolithic industry from here. Sites of Yerragondapalem and Nandipalli are important and are dated to 24,000 years BP. Flake blades and blades have been found and referred as Series III. Sri Sailam Plateau, Renigunta (Swarnamukhi River Basin), Pedaarachapalli and other sites in the Gunjan Valley has given evidence of Upper Palaeolithic. The Paleru River, Billasurgam group of caves in the Erramalais has revealed a blade industry on limestone and bone with a large number of animal remains of Elephas, Bos, Rhinoceros, etc. On the eroded surface of Rushikonda, Upper Palaeolithic tools have been found exposed while at Ramayogiagraharam, north of Rushikonda, excavations revealed successive occupation of Middle Palaeolithic, Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic.

Damin industries of Bansloi River Basin, Jharkand

Described as an “incipient blade industry with an element of burins, a predominance of retouched flakes, cores and scrapers and with few blades” Damin industry was first documented by Chakrabarti in parts of Pakaur, Dumka, Godda and Sahibganj districts of Jharkand. Tools including microlithic elements on chert occur in a well-defined stratigraphic situation.

Later reconnaissance work by Kumar Akhilesh found Upper Palaeolithic artefacts like blade cores, flake cores, scrapers of various types like convex, hollow, thumbnail, end , points, borers burins denticulates, knives, notch, microlithic components including crescent, pen knife, triangle, non-geometric microliths and blades. These tools were recovered from a sandy gravel and were mostly on chert, chalcedony, agate, quartz, basalt, fossil wood. An intrinsic feature of the Upper Palaeolithic industry here was its microlithic blade cores. Surface sites on lateritic regolith resting on weathered Rajmahal Trap or on the surface of the eroded lateritic duricrust also exposed tools. Other localities where Upper Palaeolithic tools were evidenced include Ramnathpur Hill, Bara Pokhar, Ranga, Parerkola, Dohari Pahar, Surajbera rock shelter, Jitko, and Chitlo village

Renigunta

Located in Chittoor District, here four Upper Palaeolithic localities have been identified. Points on blade, backed blades, end scrapers and blades on fine grained grey and purple quartzite lumps were located on the eroded first aggradational terrace formed by a red soil deposit.

Attirampakkam

These are capped by a ferricrete containing tools indicative of an Upper Palaeolithic horizon (Layer 2; average 0.20 m thick). Artefacts are of fine-grained quartzites. This horizon also yielded calcrete root casts, extensive animal burrows, possible post-holes and two conjoinable tools.

Bhimbetka

The Upper Palaeolithic tools come from the clayey layer 4 which was 15 to 20 cm thick. They include quartzite flakes, blades, occasional burins, short thin blades, side scrapers, end scrapers etc. Raw material was locally available.

Visadi

An Upper Palaeolithic factory site was discovered here comprising blades, burins, scrapers, flakes and cores on quartz formed the assemblage.

Chopani Mando

An important habitation site in the Belan Valley, this site has a cultural sequence from the Upper Palaeolithic to the Neolithic. Locally available raw material, chert, from the Vindhyas, were utilized for fashioning the tools. Faunal remains found associated include wild cattle, sheep, goats which are non-indigenous to the region and probably indicate them being brought here for domestication.

Son Valley sites of Baghor I and Baghor III

Located in the Siddhi District of Madhya Pradesh, these two sites were subjected to excavations by G.R. Sharma and J. Desmond Clark. Both the sites are of single context occupation.

Baghor I has given evidence of dumping of tool debitage, manufacturing areas, and a possible hearth for heat treatment of chert and chalcedony, the main raw materials for the tools. Tools are dominated by backed blades, truncated blades, notched and serrated blades, scraper, cores and flakes. An interesting find is of a possible shrine, indicated by a block of sandstone surrounded by a rubble circle, similar to the contemporary Shakti shrines in the area.

Baghor III

This is the older of the two sites. Tools from this site are of near microlithic proportions. They include truncated bladelets, scalene and isosceles triangles, lunates, awls, borers, convex scrapers, besides small bladelets probably stuck from pyramidal cores. A debitage scatter was also found in a circular concentration.

11. Chronology

The chronology of the Upper Palaeolithic phase is relatively well known in comparison with Lower and Middle Palaeolithic. The stratigraphic position whenever they occur in stratified context in the different river valleys shows that this industry succeeds the Middle Palaeolithic and precedes the Mesolithic. Also, this phase belongs to the terminal phase of the Late Pleistocene. The available 14C and TL dates are given in the Table below.

These dates indicate that in Maharashtra region the range is from c. 27,000 years B.P. to 10,000 years B.P., in Andhra Pradesh between 25,000 and 15,000 years B.P. and in Tamil Nadu it is 25,000 years B.P. Thus, a time bracket of 40,000 years to 10,000 years B.P. may be tentatively fixed.

12. Summary

To sum up, the Upper Palaeolithic in India has a distinct identity. It succeeds the Middle Palaeolithic and precedes the Mesolithic with a time bracket of c. 40,000 years BP to 10,000 years BP in the Late Pleistocene. The industry is based on blade and bone tool technology. Flake-blade, blade tool and blade and burin industries are reported from different parts of India from both surface scatters and stratified sites from the desert areas as well as several river valleys. Bone tools and faunal remains are reported from Kurnool cave areas and the Godavarikhani open air site.

There is some evidence of art during this period. There were shifts in climate and environment in different parts of India during this period. It is heartening to note that some attempts are made to gain insights into the life-ways of Upper Palaeolithic apart from time-space systematics, by undertaking intensive study of small areas to interpret intra and inter-site variability and relationships, and palaeo-demography based on artefactual, and eco-factual data and ethno-archaeological information from contemporary simple societies.