Crossing Borders: Selected Papers from the 13th International Conference of the European Association of Southeast Asian Archaeologists

Chapter 2 Hoabinhian in the Siwaliks of North-Western India?

13 Hoabinhian in the Siwaliks of North-Western India Chapter 2 Hoabinhian in the Siwaliks of North-Western India? Claire Gaillard, Mukesh Singh and Anne Dambricourt Malassé Abstract The Hoabinhian represents the late Pleistocene and early Holocene technical practices in mainland Southeast Asia and its bordering regions. Despite the land connections that existed during the Last Glacial Maximum this technical tradition did not spread eastwards in island Southeast Asia (except in Sumatra) but westwards. For instance, in Nepal, some lithic assemblages have been interpreted as proceeding from the same tradition. Further west, the Siwalik Hills of north-western India yield assemblages rich in cobble tools, known as Soanian. At places, these Soanian assemblages include quadrangular cobble tools comparable to some of those occurring in the Hoabinhian. The Soanian is always found on the surface, and therefore without chronological context; for a long time it was assumed to belong to the Lower Palaeolithic. The occurrence of quadrangular tools looking like Hoabinhian tools suggests instead a technological relationship with the East during the late Pleistocene. At the same time, people settled in peninsular India were using a completely different technology (flakes and blades with microlithic trends). The forested and hilly environment may be one of the reasons why such a kind of tool kit developed. Introduction The western part of the Siwaliks has long been known for its rich Palaeolithic assemblages, especially in the Potwar Plateau and the Soan / Sohan valley (Teilhard de Chardin 1936, 1937; Terra and Paterson 1939; Rendell and Dennell 1985; Dennell et al. 1988; Rendell et al. 1989) and also in the Pabbi Hills (Hurcombe and Dennell 1992; Dennell 2004, 2007) or in the Siwalik Frontal Range between the Beas and Sutlej rivers (Mohapatra 1966, 1974, 1981; Mohapatra and Singh 1979a, 1979b; Karir 1985; Gaillard et al. 2008, 2010c), then eastward up to the Markanda River (Joshi et al. 1975; Chauhan 2003, 2007, 2008) as well as on the terraces of these rivers and their tributaries. From the beginning, two technical traditions were identified: Acheulian and Soanian. The Acheulian was first considered older than the Soanian due to its lower position in the stratigraphy (Teilhard de Chardin 1937) but it was subsequently published as contemporaneous or in alternation with the Soanian (Terra and Paterson 1939). This idea was consolidated by Halam L. Movius and his theory (the “Movius Line”) about two cultures in the Lower Palaeolithic of the Old World (Movius 1944, 1948). Although the stratigraphic interpretations of Helmut de Terra and Thomas Thomson Paterson were thoroughly dismantled (Rendell et al. 1989), the Acheulian may well be older than the Soanian (Gaillard and Mishra 2001; Mishra 2007) since in the Jhelum valley, near Dina and Jalapur (Pakistan), a few Acheulian artifacts have been found in deposits dated between 700 and 400 ka (Rendell and Dennell 1985) and in the Siwalik Frontal Range, near Hoshiarpur, the Acheulian occurs in a geological context suggesting that it belongs to the Pinjore Formation (Gaillard et al. 2010a, 2010b), hence older than 600 ka (Ranga Rao 1993; Nanda 2002). Regarding the Soanian, it is usually found without much abrasion on the river terraces and therefore cannot be older than these terraces which were formed after the uplift of the Siwalik Frontal Range, starting in the middle of the Middle Pleistocene. Two main technical stages are identified within the Soanian: the early Soanian mainly composed of cobble tools (choppers and chopping-tools) with a few flakes, and the late Soanian mostly including flakes and cores (sometimes well organized), along with cobble tools. The latter is 13 Crossing Borders hi res combined13 13 8/23/2012 7:44:39 PM 14 Claire Gaillard, Mukesh Singh and Anne Dambricourt Malassé Fig. 2.1: Sites with flat quadrangular cobble tools in the area of the Siwalik Frontal Range between Beas and Ghaggar rivers (small circles = 1 tool, large circles = 2–9 tools, largest circles = 10–12 tools). The richest sites are Samundri and Pandori; tools illustrated in the following figures were found, from north to south, at Tutowal (TTWL), Nathan de Ghar (NTG), Samundri, Kanpur Khui (KPR), Jagan (JGN) and Dolian (DOL) (Map modified from TPC H-8B, U.S.). Crossing Borders hi res combined14 14 8/23/2012 7:44:39 PM 15 Hoabinhian in the Siwaliks of North-Western India technologically related to the Middle Palaeolithic (Teilhard 1937; Movius 1948; Paterson and Drummond 1962; Sankalia 1974; Karir 1985; Lycett 2007) and is dated...