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Monday 24 December 2012

The origins of iron-working in India:
new evidence from the Central Ganga
Plain and the Eastern Vindhyas-
Rakesh Tewari


Recent excavations in Uttar Pradesh have turned up iron artefacts, furnaces, tuyeres and slag in
layers radiocarbon dated between c. BC 1800 and 1000. This raises again the question of whether
iron working was brought in to India during supposed immigrations of the second millennium
BC, or developed independently.

Keywords: India, Early Iron Age, Iron working, Ganga Valley, Eastern Vindhyas
yog

Thursday 20 December 2012

Mehrgarh was not the the farming seed of South Asia:

Early Farming at Lahuradewa

This paper embodies an outcome of investigations emanated from the excavations carried out at the lakeside settlement of
Lahuradewa, from 2001 to 2006, in district Sant Kabirnagar, Uttar Pradesh, India. The continuous occurrence of microcharcoal in the lakebeds justifiably mitigate the human activities that persistently set fire to the vegetation in the area during
past  ca. 10,000 years. Palynological studies from lakebeds helped in reconstruction of  vegetational history, sequential
changes in the climate and early agricultural activities from early  Holocene and onwards in Middle Ganga Plain. The human
groups at that early date, who subjected the vegetation to fire for environmental management, were those who brought into
being a settled early farming culture at Lahuradewa  – characterised by cord-impressed pottery. Primordially, the record of
domesticated rice in the opening phase of Lahuradewa settlement, prima facie constitutes the evidence of early Holocene

agriculture in Middle Ganga Plain.