Recent Developments in South Asian Prehistory and Protohistory

Bibliographic Data

ID2296103
AuthorsJerome Jacobson (0000-0002-1371-1077, City University of New York, corresponding author)
Year1979
Volume8
Issue1
Pages467-502
Publication date1979-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAnnual Review of Anthropology (BOOK_SERIES)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0084-6570 • E-ISSN: 1545-4290
PublisherAnnual Reviews (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1146/annurev.an.08.100179.002343
OpenAlexW2147809314
LanguageEN
Citations received9
References cited18

Five years ago, the dean of Indian prehistory, H. D. Sankalia, wrote, . . . in a sense Indian prehistory is where the European was in 1860 (180, p. 13). If that was an excessively critical assessment of the state of the art in 1974, it certainly cannot be applied to Indian prehistory-or protohistory -in 1979. Today there are few world areas of comparable size where knowledge of the ancient past is growing so rapidly and over so broad a geographical and chronological spectrum. Far from being similar to European prehistory of 1860, Indian prehistoric and protohistoric research incorporates some of the latest advances in archaeological science. Questions that until recently could hardly be asked -about absolute chronologies, ancient environments, and human adapta tions-are today finding answers. Some of the salient developments within the past few years that are summarized in this paper include: the first excavation of a site in which every major stage of the Paleolithic and Mesolithic are represented (Bhim betka, Madhya Pradesh); excavation of open-air habitation sites of the Lower Paleolithic; the emergence of a blade-and-burin complex of Late Pleistocene age with associated bone implements and the earliest art of India; discovery of what may be the first human skull of Pleistocene date known from South Asia; the first excavation of Mesolithic dwellings and an extensive Mesolithic cemetery; evidence for animal domestication dating

Ancient history · Archaeology · Ethnology · Geography · Prehistory · Sociology · Anthropology · Forensic Anthropology and Bioarchaeology Studies · History · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology · South Asian Studies and Conflicts

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