The Ganges Basin and northeastern India

The Ganges Basin, with major tributaries such as the Yamuna, witnessed a cultural trajectory from Neolithic onward which is superficially similar to that of Chalcolithic western India, but rather different in style and detail. There is another complication with the Ganges, especially in its middle and lower portions from Allahabad eastward, this being that the spread of agriculture might have been two-layered, with a period of rice cultivation in the east older than, or at least contemporary with, the arrival of the Southwest Asian crops. But the evidence is currently most unclear on this. The Southeast Asian evidence offers little help, for while we know that rice cultivation was present in Thailand by 2500 BC, we have no good data on this question from Burma, Bangladesh, or northeastern India.

As far as Assam and the other provinces of far northeastern India are concerned, it is clear that some form of Southeast Asian Neolithic with cordmarked pottery (sometimes with tripods), spindle whorls, and occasional shouldered stone adzes was making a presence by soon after 3000 BC, succeeding a rather poorly known series of late huntergatherer lithic industries (Rao 1977; Singh 1997). Presumably, these Neolithic people grew rice, but we cannot be certain of this. In the central and eastern Ganges basin there is much stronger evidence in many sites for rice cultivation associated with the use of a style of cord-marked pottery that could have Southeast Asian antecedents. But one problem here is that cord-marked pottery also occurs in some Harappanderived assemblages to the west." In addition, there are still many problems of chronology, especially in the identification of any real precedence of Southeast Asian markers beneath those elements of the Ganges Neolithic (for instance, Black and Red Ware pottery, barley, copper technology, sheep, and goat) derived from westerly sources.

Three of the key sites here are Koldihwa, Mahagara, and Chopani-Mando in the Belan valley, which drains north into the Ganges near Allahabad. They have stirred a debate within South Asian archaeology focused on claimed radiocarbon dates for rice and cord-marked pottery, especially from Koldihwa, extending back to 6500 BC (Sharma et al. 1980; IAR 1975-76:85). But

Mahagara, which has pottery like that from Koldihwa, is dated by C14 to the second millennium BC. Another related site called Kunjhun II dates to about 2000 BC (IAR 1977-78:89; Clark and Khanna 1989). The upshot of all this is that few people now believe that the early Koldihwa dates relate to the Neolithic material from the site at all (e.g., Dhavalikar 1997:230; Glover and Higham 1996; but they are accepted by Chakrabarti 1999:328).

The current situation in most Ganges sites is that rice and cord-marked pottery occur together with non-impressed pottery styles (Black and Red Ware in particular), and elements of the Southwest Asian agropastoral complex. This appears to be the actual situation at Koldihwa (Misra 1977:108), and in a group of culturally related sites at Senuwar, Imlidih Khurd I, Chirand, and Narhan, together covering an occupation sequence from about 2500 to 1000 BC. These sites have between them an economy based on rice, barley, bread wheat, lentils, grams, sorghum, and pearl millet (the last two reported at Imlidih Khurd).2° Sites downstream in West Bengal, such as Pandu Rajar Dhibi, appear to have focused more on rice cultivation, as befitting their higher rainfall. Domesticated animals include cattle, water buffalo, pig, sheep, and goat, with horse claimed at Imlidih Khurd in the late second millennium Bc. Houses have wattle and daub walls and are generally of circular plan. Some sites (especially Chirand, but not Narhan) have microblade and bone industries like those in Koldihwa and Chopani-Mando.Z'

In order to gain a better perspective on the Ganges basin as a whole we need to retreat westward to Punjab and the Ganges-Yamuna doab, since it is in these regions that the non-corded (Black and Red) pottery styles appear to have originated before spreading downstream toward Bengal. This area has both PreHarappan and Mature Harappan occupation extending east to the vicinity of Delhi on the Yamuna River. Between the Yamuna and Ganges rivers, downstream as far as Allahabad, the oldest pottery is termed "Ochre Colored Pottery" (OCP) - normally wheel-made, red-slipped, and frequently painted with black patterns. Much of this pottery is water rolled and often in poor condition when found, and there is considerable disagreement about its immediate antecedents. Some OCP sites in Rajasthan could be pre-Harappan, but others clearly indicate a degree of Harappan influence and contact (Lal 1984:33). For instance, many artifacts found in OCP sites, such as pottery toy cart wheels, bull figurines, and carnelian beads, have definite Harappan

affinities. Many OCP sites also have a basically Harappan economy with very few summer crops apart from rice. On the other hand, the copper tool industry (including the famous "copper hoards") associated with the OCP cannot clearly so be derived from the Harappan. The copper itself was local to northeastern Rajasthan (Khetri-Ganeshwar region), and was supplied from here to Harappan cities as well as to the Ganges sites.

For the OCP, a general origin at about 3000-2500 Bc in Punjab or Rajasthan would seem to be indicated (Agrawala and Kumar 1993; Chakrabarti 1999; Sabi 2001). Clearly, it evolved side by side with the Harappan and was strongly influenced by it, but its main significance is that it remains the first attested episode of agricultural dispersal into the Ganges Basin from the west. In some OCP sites, such as Atranjikhera and Jodhpura (Gaur 1983; Agrawala and Kumar 1993), the OCP developed into the Black and Red Ware (BRW) with slipped and burnished red exteriors of the type found widely in the middle and lower Ganges Basin. Dates for BRW in Bihar appear to follow 2500 BC, perhaps 2000 BC in Bengal. The BRW was then succeeded during the Iron Age, after 1000 BC, by a different style of Painted Gray Ware (PGW). Many archaeologists clearly regard the sequence of OCP through BRW to PGW in the Ganges Basin as continuous,22 and the issue of continuity (versus cultural disruption) in the Ganges sequence, from OCP through to early historical times, lies at the crux of the debate about early Indo-European settlement in the subcontinent. We return to this issue later.

In my opinion, the best explanation for the spread of agriculture through the Ganges Basin is that a cultural assemblage with cord-marked pottery and rice cultivation was moving upstream from the east at about the same time as a separate complex with Southwest Asian crops and OCP pottery was moving downstream from the west, that is at about 3000 BC. The resulting fusion appears to have been rapid and without undue social upheaval.