Black and red ware culture

The black and red ware culture (BRW) is a late Bronze Age Indian and early Iron Age Indian archaeological culture, associated with the Indus Valley Civilisation and South India.[1]

Black and Red Ware, Sonkh, Uttar Pradesh. Government Museum, Mathura.
Outline of South Asian history

In the Western Ganges plain (western Uttar Pradesh) it is dated to c. 1450-1200 BCE, and is succeeded by the Painted Grey Ware culture; whereas in the Central and Eastern Ganges plain (eastern Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Bengal) and Central India (Madhya Pradesh) the BRW appears during the same period but continues for longer, until c. 700-500 BCE, when it is succeeded by the Northern Black Polished Ware culture.[2]

In the Western Ganges plain, the BRW was preceded by the Ochre Coloured Pottery culture. The BRW sites were characterized by subsistence agriculture (cultivation of rice, barley, and legumes), and yielded some ornaments made of shell, copper, carnelian, and terracotta.[3]

In some sites, particularly in eastern Punjab and Gujarat, BRW pottery is associated with Late Harappan pottery, and according to some scholars like Tribhuan N. Roy, the BRW may have directly influenced the Painted Grey Ware and Northern Black Polished Ware cultures.[4] BRW pottery is unknown west of the Indus Valley.[5]

Use of iron, although sparse at first, is relatively early, postdating the beginning of the Iron Age in Anatolia (Hittites) by only two or three centuries, and predating the European (Celts) Iron Age by another two to three hundred years. Recent findings in Northern India show Iron working in the 1800-1000 BCE period.[6] According to Shaffer, the "nature and context of the iron objects involved of the BRW culture are very different from early iron objects found in Southwest Asia."[7]

References
  1. Ragupathy, Ponnampalam (1987). Early Settlements in Jaffna: An Archaeological Survey. University of Jaffna. p. 9.
  2. Franklin Southworth, Linguistic Archaeology of South Asia (Routledge, 2005), p.177
  3. Upinder Singh (2008), A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India From the Stone Age to the 12th Century, p.220
  4. Shaffer, Jim. 1993, Reurbanization: The eastern Punjab and beyond. In Urban Form and Meaning in South Asia: The Shaping of Cities from Prehistoric to Precolonial Times, ed. H. Spodek and D.M. Srinivasan. p. 57
  5. Shaffer, Jim. Mathura: A protohistoric Perspective in D.M. Srinivasan (ed.), Mathura, the Cultural Heritage, 1989, pp. 171-180. Delhi. cited in Chakrabarti 1992
  6. Tewari, Rakesh (2003). "The origins of iron working in India: new evidence from the Central Ganga Plain and the Eastern Vindhyas" (PDF). Antiquity. 77 (297): 536–544. doi:10.1017/S0003598X00092590.
  7. Shaffer 1989, cited in Chakrabarti 1992:171

See also

Notes
  • Shaffer, Jim. Mathura: A protohistoric Perspective in D.M. Srinivasan (ed.), Mathura, the Cultural Heritage, 1989, pp. 171–180. Delhi.
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