Late Pleistocene art of India (original) (raw)
Related papers
Indian Pleistocene rock art in a global context
The incredibly early petroglyphs reported from central Indian quartzite caves immediately raise the issue of the compatibility of this information with our knowledge from the rest of the world. It is demonstrated that, with the exception of the presumably greater antiquity of the Indian finds, they are fully consistent with what five continents have yielded. The Indian sites offer numerous cupules and a very few linear grooves; the oldest forms of rock art from Africa, Europe, Australia and the Americas comprise precisely the same forms of petroglyphs, and even the subsequent traditions are almost identical. This is demonstrated with the earliest known examples of rock art from those continents, and is partly attributed to the taphonomy of rock art. Rock paintings, similarly, are limited to regions where deep limestone caves were used by Pleistocene hominins, evidence for which is so far only available from two continents. Even the earliest known indications of portable palaeoart from India are entirely consistent with other continents.
LOWER PALAEOLITHIC ROCK ART OF INDIA AND ITS GLOBAL CONTEXT
The extremely early rock art reported from two central Indian sites raises the question of how this evidence relates to that of the rest of the Old World. In exploring this issue, the currently known Lower Palaeolithic palaeoart is briefly reviewed, including beads and pendants, petroglyphs, pigment utilization, proto-figurines, engravings and manuports. This analysis suggests that, although the proposed age of the early Indian petroglyphs and other material is perhaps somewhat greater than that of comparable finds in Africa or Europe, it is not unrealistic. In particular the discovery of very similar material in southern Africa provides considerable support for the most ancient Indian finds of palaeoart, particularly as there is great consistency between three continents in the nature and composition of such material. The article also reviews India’s Lower Palaeolithic technology and chronology, so as to provide a context within which the subcontinent’s earliest art-like evidence can be situated.
Journal of Historical, Archaeological and Anthropological Studies, 2023
The present paper briefly discusses the results ofrecent investigations carried out in the Debrigarh-Lohara massif located in the northern Bargarh uplands of Odisha, which brought to light three new rock art sites. The most significant characteristic features of these newly discovered rock art sites are, absence of petroglyphs, ceramics, and use of bi-chrome as well as polychrome techniques in the art representations, and presence of monochrome pictographs executed by purple red pigment and represented mostly by naturalistic wild animal and anthropomorphic forms, besides a few design patterns. The habitation floor of two rock art sites out of three yielded evidence for microliths including geometric forms, besides a few used red ochre pieces. On circumstantial grounds, taking into consideration microlithic assemblages from stratified and dated open-air sites located nearby the Debrigarh-Lohara massif, a Late Palaeolithic time bracket for the pictographs of the newly discovered rock art sites has been suggested.
THE GLOBAL CONTEXT OF LOWER PALAEOLITHIC INDIAN PALAEOART
This paper begins by reviewing the art-like productions currently known from the world's Lower Palaeolithic period. In order to place the evidence known from India into this context, it then describes the available Lower Palaeolithic evidence from that country. It also reviews the Lower Palaeolithic hominin occupation evidence from India in some detail.
Journal of World Prehistory, 1994
While the Pleistocene art of Europe has been described, discussed, analyzed and “explained” in thousands of publications, that of Asia has attracted almost no interest at all. This paper is a brief summary of all known Ice Age art of Asia, both rock art and portable art. The current evidence is critically reviewed, region by region, and hundreds of specimens purported to be art are rejected by the author. Those considered to be authentic are often extremely isolated, in both time and space. It is argued that this record can only be explained effectively as having been greatly distorted by several factors. The geographical distribution, for instance, is clearly conditioned by such factors as intensity of research activities and local preservation conditions. Thus the pronounced paucity of available evidence is, at least in part, imposed by taphonomic biases of various types.
2009
In 2003, as part of a program of archaeological survey in the southern part of Kurnool District in Andhra Pradesh, south India, a series of previously unreported rock art sites were recorded. These primarily consist of pictographs, painted onto the walls of quartzite rock shelters and boulders. They appear to cover a range of time periods from the present day and potentially extending back into the Pleistocene. This paper presents the results of the research undertaken by the authors in Kurnool district of Karnatak.
Rock Art in India published by Arnold Heinemann, India, 1984
The paintings, engravings and bruisings on the walls and the ceilings of the caves and rock-shelters of Europe started coming to light only in the first decade of the 19th century. It was however, only in 1880 that the Spanish archaeologist, Marcelino Don de Sautuola first proclaimed the existence of palaeolithic paintings in the Altamira-’caves. Since then many paintings of the European Ice age (Pleistocene) and Mesolithic days were discovered specially in the Franco-Cantabrian area, Mediterranean, Eastern European areas. Mesolithic chattels were also found in mountainous areas of the near-east, specially in Palestine and Jordan. In north Africa, specially in Sahara, in north-western and south-western parts of North America and throughout the south American continent the rock paintings of the historic period have been found. In south-east Asia, Indonesia and Australia also deposits of pre-historic rock-arts have been reported.
The Prehistoric Rock Shelter Paintings Of Lakhudiyar, Kumaon Uttarakhand, India-A Study
Zeichen JOURNAL, 2022
This paper studies the prehistoric rock paintings from the site of Lakhudiyar in Almora district of Kumaon, Uttarakhand and highlights the geological and environmental background of the region with its cultural significance and its existence in the tradition of art and craft practices, still surviving artefacts or folk traditions of the region and identify how art was made and used, how the people who made it in the remote past must have lived.
Central Indian rock art is long known for its exceptional rock paintings; depicting crucial stages of human evolution in the subcontinent. The inception of its discovery was initiated by Carleylle from the Mirzapur region of Central India during the latter half of nineteenth century, the process continued till today. During the first part of the twenty first century a plethora of rock art site shave been discovered in India; particularly in Central India. It is relevant to mention here that the dataset is diverse and each rock art site has certain unique elements that other sites do not represent in their morphic record. However, the variations of the morphic details and nature of their occurrences in different rock shelters and even within the same group of rock-shelters have not been explored yet. The methodological rigor and sound documentation techniques brought to light several new sites in the region during a field survey of nine months between 2010 and 2012. New discoveries of painted rock-shelters enhanced the total number of archaeological sites found in the given region, but also this poses new challenges for the preservation and conservation of the archaeological sites for future research and posterity. This paper details a few new discoveries in the districts of Mirzapur and Rewa discussing their present and future importance in rock art research and archaeology in Central Indian context.
Heritage: Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies in Archaeology , 2024
Abstract: Skills deal with the ability to do things and techniques with ways of doing them. In this paper discussing Eastern Vindhyan rock art, documented from 2009 to 2023, we identify the chief skills and narrative techniques used in a sample of thirty shelters, in seven distinct groups. It is argued that distinctiveness is obtained by the chaine operatoire followed by artists making rock art. The use of shapes, colours, themes, surfaces, and contact material are discussed. Mesolithic to Neolithic paintings are often superimposed or juxtaposed with iron-age ones. Early historic, medieval, and colonial rock art is also found in the same caves. Learning of skills is evident from drawings made by children, youth, and young adults. While there is significant variability between sites, from one cluster to the next, this rock painting group has a distinct Eastern Vindhyan style.