Abstract
Here we examine patterns in stone tool technology among Mesolithic, Neolithic and Iron Age localities in the Sanganakallu–Kupgal site complex, Bellary District, Karnataka, South India. Statistical tests are used to compare proportions of raw materials and artefact types, and to compare central tendencies in metric variables taken on flakes and tools. Lithic-related findings support the inference of at least two distinct technological and economic groups at Sanganakallu–Kupgal, a microlith-focused foraging society on the one hand, and on the other, an agricultural society whose lithic technologies centred upon the production of pressure bladelets and dolerite edge-ground axes. Evidence for continuity in lithic technological processes through time may reflect indigenous processes of development, and a degree of continuity from the Mesolithic through to the Neolithic period. Lithic production appears to have become a specialised and spatially segregated activity by the terminal Neolithic and early Iron Age, supporting suggestions for the emergence of an increasingly complex economy and political hierarchy.
Highlights
The Neolithic period inaugurates a number of profound changes in technology and human materiality (e.g. Childe, 1936; Wengrow, 1998; Boivin, 2008), with the introduction of new approaches to the landscape for food production, new uses of clay, for example in creating pottery and houses, and new techniques of lithic production, notably groundstone
What is needed to assess these models of displacement versus acculturation are more detailed studies of material culture typology and production practices in Neolithic cultures across a range of regions
The predominance of cattle imagery in the petroglyphs of the hilltop sites and the cattle remains in the ashmounds, coupled with the pecking process used to create both the axes and the petroglyphs, means the art can be attributed to the Neolithic hilltop occupation with reasonable confidence
Summary
Journal of Anthropological Archaeology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jaa. Lithic technology and social transformations in the South Indian Neolithic: The evidence from Sanganakallu–Kupgal. We examine patterns in stone tool technology among Mesolithic, Neolithic and Iron Age localities in the Sanganakallu–Kupgal site complex, Bellary District, Karnataka, South India. Evidence for continuity in lithic technological processes through time may reflect indigenous processes of development, and a degree of continuity from the Mesolithic through to the Neolithic period. Lithic production appears to have become a specialised and spatially segregated activity by the terminal Neolithic and early Iron Age, supporting suggestions for the emergence of an increasingly complex economy and political hierarchy
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