Earlier dates for Copper Hoard Culture confirmed at Sinauli village of UP

[Guest guest]

"Carlos Aramayo" <carlosaramayotigres> wrote:

 

 

Dear members of the List,

 

On November 17, 2005 news appeared of the discovery of a Harappan

burial site with 18 skeletons at Sinauli village in Baghpat district

of Uttar Pradesh:

 

http://tinyurl.com/ase5w

 

It comes as a saga of earlier press articles from August:

 

http://tinyurl.com/a9ob3 (Article with a wrong date of 3000 BP)

 

http://tinyurl.com/9bo94

 

Amongst many implications of the recent findings it is the discovery

of two "antenna swords" belonging in style to famous "Copper Hoard

Culture" in Ganga region by the Archaeological Survey of India. These

copper swords seems to be contemporary with Mature Harappan period

(2500-2000 BC).

 

Earlier H. C. Bharadwaj in his work Aspects of Ancient Indian

Technology, Motilal Banarsidass, New Delhi 1979 had established that

copper hoards, being found in the same layers as Ochre Coloured

Pottery by B. B. Lal, belonged to 1100-800 BC, but K.N. Dikshit in:

Essays in Indian Protohistory, 1979 suggested a date from 2650 to

1180 BC based on thermoluminescent method.

 

On the other hand R. C. Gaur excavations at Lal Qila gave also a

thermoluminiscent date for OCP in time bracket of 2030 and 1730 BC

with a mean date of 1880 BC.

 

There are even a claim of earlier dates by M. D. N.

Sahi: "...settlements of the OCP-Copper Hoards culture, datable

between 3700-3000 B.C., as discussed by the present author elsewhere,

are found existing in the districts of Allahabad (Sringaverapura and

Mirapatti) and Varanasi (Kamauli)." (Sahi's paper "Neolithic Syndrome

of the Ganga Valley" at National Seminar on the Archaeology of the

Ganga Valley, December 2004).

 

It is worth to mention the work of archaeometallurgists R.

Balasubramaniam, T. Laha and A. Srivastava who analyzed a copper

hoard piece along with an Ahar culture copper one at the Department

of Materials and Metallurgical Engineering, Indian Institute of

Technology, Kanpur in 2003, publishing their conclusions in the

paper "Long term corrosion behaviour of copper in soil: A study of

archaeological analogues".

 

Also Deo Prakash Sharma published a work called Newly Discovered

Copper Hoard, Weapons of South Asia, Delhi, 2002 in which he

establishes a time between 2800 and 1500 BC for copper hoards based

on analysis of copper implemets in the National Museum, New

Delhi: "Till today around 5031 copper hoard implements have been

reported from 197 sites mostly from Gangetic plains among which 193

are in National Museum collection. We have fixed date of copper

hoards from circa 2800 to 1500 B.C. and these could be divided into

two groups as follows (A) North Eastern Indian (B) Ganga-Yamuna doab

and Western India. The technology of western group B is of a

distinctive and advanced type and is influenced by the

Harappans...The anthropomorphic figure of copper hoard is a cult

object and a symbol of good omen. The lugged shouldered axes and weed

chisels are a new type in copper hoard implements. The shouldered

axes show their origin from South East Asia via North-East India and

Middle Ganga plain. The copper hoard implements and OCP ceramic are

present in stratified deposits of Ganeshwar, Jodhpura, Mithathal,

Madarpur, Saipai and Khatoli...Copper hoard implements of western

group show genetic relationship with Harappans" (Deo Prakash Sharma

2002).

 

So we can assume that recent Sinauli village findings by ASI of two

copper implements support the earlier dates for Copper Hoard Culture

in Ganga region, especially Dikshit and Deo Prakash Sharma's claim.

We must note once more that Sinauli is a Mature Harappan burial site

where the two swords belonging to Copper Hoard Culture were found.

 

Best regards,

 

Carlos Aramayo

Historian

La Paz

Bolivia

 

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