New Sub-Himalayan Holocene Lithic Industry

摘要

The Palaeolithic investigations in the northwestern sub-Himalayas have since been known by the Soanian industries first discovered by de-Terra and Paterson (1939) in the Potwar region of Pakistan. After independence, the research in this region was carried out mainly by Paterson & Drumond (1962) and later by Rendell et al (1989), Dennell et al (1991) and Salim (1994) in Pakistan, by Lal (1956), Sankalia, (1974,) Mohapatra (1990, 2007), Mohapatra& Singh (1979) Saroj (1974), Sankhyan (1983), Karir (1985), Joshi (1968), Singh & Karir (1998) and Gaillard et al (2008), and then recently by Chauhan (2004, 2007a, 2007b) and Soni & Soni (2005, 2007, 2008, 2009), in India. The lithic artefacts that have since been collected by most of the earlier investigators were claimed as belonging to the Mode-1 category and have generally followed the approach of de-Terra & Paterson though the recent finds (Chauhan 2004, Soni& Soni 2008,2009) scientifically deem to prove something entirely different. The earlier investigators (particularly in the Indian part of the sub-Himalayas) never found any lithic industry in stratigraphic or datable context and they had merely speculated (Mohapatra 2007) the Soanian to have existed probably from mid to late or terminal Pleistocene. Most of the earlier researchers had categorized Soanian either on the basis of now out-dated Alpine glaciations chronology (de-Terra & Paterson 1939) or the tool typology and other un-datable geological attributes. However, the present authors' discovery of Soanian artefacts along with terracotta pieces and some new tool types strongly demands that the stone-age research in the northwestern sub-Himalayas be reconsidered in light of these new revelations. In the following, three already reported and one new site are (Fig.1) being discussed which call for a change in the interpretation of the Soanian and its relation to the Holocene epoch geo-archaeology.