CHALCOLITHIC AND EARLY AGRARIAN COMMUNITIES

Research record

“Chalcolithic” is used here in its conventional archaeological sense for assemblages in which copper appears alongside stone, bone and other technologies. It does not name an ethnicity, language, polity or biological population. In the Middle Ganga Plain, copper is often scarce, while black-and-red ware, microlithic or ground-stone tools, bone implements, wattle-and-daub architecture and farming evidence continue from earlier contexts. For that reason the term is most useful as a descriptive chronological label, not as a claim that metal transformed every aspect of life at once. The excavated sequences do not support a simple staircase in which a Neolithic village abruptly becomes Chalcolithic after the arrival of copper. At Chirand, Chechar–Kutubpur and comparative sites farther south and west, older technologies persisted. House construction remained largely organic; microliths and bone tools continued; cultivation, fishing and animal use remained central. The significant change is therefore an enlargement and recombination of technological and economic repertoires rather than the instantaneous replacement of one system by another (Singh 2004; Archaeological Survey of India 1962–63, 1968–69). There is no single Chalcolithic date range that can be imposed on the whole Middle Ganga Plain. Site sequences begin and end at different times, radiocarbon programmes are uneven, and older excavations were often dated primarily by ceramic comparison. Recent reassessments of Early Farming and Chalcolithic chronologies in the Ganga Plain emphasize precisely this diversity. Senuwar, for example, provides a well-studied comparative sequence from Early Farming into a developed agrarian/Chalcolithic phase, but its dates cannot simply be copied onto north-Bihar or Bhagalpur sites (Singh 2004; Pokharia and colleagues in Indian Archaeology 1990–91; comparative discussion in recent radiocarbon reassessments).

Section index

1. 3.1 Scope: an archaeological label, not a people
2. 3.2 Why Chapter 3 begins with continuity rather than a “revolution”
3. 3.3 Chronology is regional and must remain provisional
4. 3.4 Black-and-red ware: useful marker, dangerous identity label
5. 3.5 Chirand: a long-lived riverine sequence
6. 3.6 Domestic architecture at Chirand
7. 3.7 Chechar–Kutubpur: a Vaishali-district agrarian anchor
8. 3.8 Chechar revisited: black-and-red ware, bone and copper
9. 3.9 Panda in Samastipur: direct evidence within the Mithila plain
10. 3.10 The oven and husk at Panda: small evidence, large implications
11. 3.11 Oriup: the clearest Chalcolithic anchor in the Anga/Bhagalpur zone
12. 3.12 Oriup and the river: settlement history includes erosion history
13. 3.13 Champa: separating the later city from the earlier regional horizon
14. 3.14 Copper was valuable because it was limited
15. 3.15 Stone and bone did not become obsolete
16. 3.16 Agriculture: continuity, diversification and evidence control
17. 3.17 Senuwar as a comparator for crop scheduling, not a substitute for Mithila evidence
18. 3.18 Animals, fish and the persistence of broad-spectrum subsistence
19. 3.19 Hearths, ovens and the archaeology of daily work
20. 3.20 Pottery and the social organisation of food
21. 3.21 Beads and material circulation
22. 3.22 Settlement growth without invented population totals
23. 3.23 Household labour and gender: what archaeology cannot assign safely
24. 3.24 Social differentiation: inequality is possible, hierarchy is not yet demonstrated
25. 3.25 Rivers, fields and the agrarian landscape
26. 3.26 From Chalcolithic to iron-using and NBPW horizons
27. 3.27 What this chapter establishes—and what it refuses to claim

Cite this record

Gajendra Thakur. “CHALCOLITHIC AND EARLY AGRARIAN COMMUNITIES.” Videha Digital Research Archive: Mithila–Vajji–Anga. Videha — https://www.videha.co.in/ · ISSN 2229-547X · GitHub mirror: https://videha-ejournal.github.io/videha/ · Digital Research Archives on GitHub: https://github.com/videha-ejournal. https://videha-ejournal.github.io/mithila-vajji-anga/records/history/social-3/