Inamgaon: A Chalcolithic Settlement in Western India

O UR excavations at Nasik and more recently at Jorwe (District Ahmednagar, Maharashtra) revealed for the first time the existence of the chalco lithic phase in the prehistory of the Deccan (Sankalia and Deo 1955). The comparative stratigraphical position of this culture, however, was determined in our excavations at Nasik (Sankalia and Deo 1955); Subsequent explorations and excavations of selected sites in western India and the Deccan have shown that the Jorwe culture, named after the type site in the Pravara valley, was well distributed in time and space. Its nuclear zone can be said to be the Pravani. and the Godavari . valleys whereas the peripheral zone of the culture extends from the Tapti valley in the north to the Krishna-Tungabhadra basin in the south. Excavations at Prakash, Bahal, Tekwada, Daimabad, Nevasa, Son,egaon, and Chandoli have .no doubt brought to light several new aspects of the culture, but all these were vertical excavations, and no complete settlement pattern of this culture has been exposed so far. The writers were, therefore, in search of a suitable site of the Jorwe culture which, unencumbered by later accretions from the historical period, could provide solutions to the many questions which have so far remained unanswered. Thus, we did not know the genesis of this culture nor was its terminal date clear. Evidence at several sites showed that the culture came into being by the middle of the second millennium B.C. and suddenly died out by the beginning of the first millennium B.C. without leaving any trace. At several sites a weathered layer separates the chalcolithic culture from the later early historical cultures, thus pointing to the desertion of the sites for about four centuries (Sankalia et al.1960). Therefore, in order to know more about the beginnings and the end of the J orwe culture, excavations were undertaken at Inamgaon, District Poona, Maharashtra (Fig. 1); The excavations are still in progress, but the first season's work can be said to have shed a welcome light on the problem of dating the end of the. culture.