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9 - The Middle Pleistocene Archaeological Record of the Indian Subcontinent

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Robin Dennell
Affiliation:
University of Sheffield
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Summary

INTRODUCTION

The Middle Pleistocene record for hominins in India is potentially one of the best in the Old World. It has been investigated for almost as long as in western Europe, and far longer than in Africa; numerous sites have been excavated, often to a high standard; and there are some excellent studies of Early Palaeolithic landscapes, most notably in the Hunsgi-Baichbal valley systems of southern India. Additionally, India has a rich ethnographic record of modern hunter-gatherers that has enriched assessments of plant usage, hunting techniques, patterns of land use, and material culture (see, for example, Paddayya 1982; Pappu 2001a; Raju 1988). Because of its size and location, India is also critical to understanding whatever dispersals of populations and techniques occurred between East Africa and the Levant to its west, and China and Southeast Asia to its east.

There are various reasons that India has not figured prominently in general discussions of the Early Palaeolithic or human evolution. One is that faunal material is only exceptionally preserved in Indian Middle Pleistocene sites, and even when present, rarely comprises more than a few isolated and poorly preserved teeth. The fossil hominin record of India is also limited to just a poorly dated hominin calotte and clavicle from the Narmada valley (see Chapter 11). Another weakness is that Early Palaeolithic sites in India have proved difficult to date, and the shortage of reliable absolute dates (or more accurately, the shortage of materials and deposits that can be dated absolutely) means that the chronological framework for the Indian Early Palaeolithic (see Table 9.1) still needs considerable development before it reaches the same standard as those for the Levant or western Europe.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2008

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