PROTOHISTORIC CULTURAL PHASES IN TELANGANA STATE: AN OVERVIEW

Abstract

The present paper is about an overview of Protohistoric cultural phases in the present Telangana state in southern India portraying the settled way of life of early human population practicing agriculture and animal husbandry along with ceramic production.We find permanent settlemens in the form of villages and subsequent development into Iron Age Megalithic culture. Beginning of permanent settlements during Neolithic period was, in a broad socio-cultural point of view, spread across three micro-regions, i.e., the Godavari valley comprising the districts of Adilabad, Karimnagar, Warangal, Medak, Nalgonda, Hyderabad and Khammam; the Tungabhadra valley of Gadwal taluk and Krishna valley in the Alampur and Kalvakurthi taluks of Mahabubnagar districts respectively. However, the sites located in the first micro-region did not show the evidence of ash mound tradition, denoting the middle stage of southern Neolithic culture(e.g., Polakonda C14 1405+-124 BCE or calibration of 1700-1415 BCE),whereas the second micro-region is characterized by the presence of ashmounds,e.g., Utnur,Manchanpalli, Ieeja and Talmari-Kutukunuru,belonged to the early stage of southern Neolithic culture of the period between 2920-2535 BCE(Utnur 2295 +-155, 2555+-113 and 2040+-113 BCE:Allchin 1961), whereas, the sites in the third micro-region located in the Krishna valley belonged to the Neolithic-Chalcolithic stage of both middle and later stages of southern Neolithic culture, and the overall picture of Neolithic culture can be broadly identified as early Neolithic, Neolithic (with stages I to IV) and Neolithic-Chalcolithic culture followed by Iron Age Megalithic culture broadly classified into habitation sites, habitation-cum-burial sites and burial sites based on their location alongside the drainage system of Godavari river 115 (of 6, 15 and 94 respectively), in the Krishna drainage system 396 (of 15, 111 and 270 respectively), etc. The habitations are found away from hills but invariably close to water sources, whereas, the habitation-cum-burial sites can be distinguished as a separate variety. However, those found close to water sources and the cemeteries are connected to habitations lying either at the foot-hill region or on the terrace of low-lying hill or hillocks with numerous large sized burials.