Local diversity in settlement, demography and subsistence across the southern Indian Neolithic-Iron Age transition: site growth and abandonment at Sanganakallu-Kupgal

The Southern Indian Neolithic-Iron Age transition demonstrates considerable regional variability in settlement location, density, and size. While researchers have shown that the region around the Tungabhadra and Krishna River basins displays significant subsistence and demographic continuity, and intensification, from the Neolithic into the Iron Age ca. 1200 cal. BC, archaeological and chronometric records in the Sanganakallu region point to hilltop village expansion during the Late Neolithic and ‘Megalithic’ transition period (ca. 1400–1200 cal. BC) prior to apparent abandonment ca. 1200 cal. BC, with little evidence for the introduction of iron technology into the region. We suggest that the difference in these settlement histories is a result of differential access to stable water resources during a period of weakening and fluctuating monsoon across a generally arid landscape. Here, we describe well-dated, integrated chronological, archaeobotanical, archaeozoological and archaeological survey datasets from the Sanganakallu-Kupgal site complex that together demonstrate an intensification of settlement, subsistence and craft production on local hilltops prior to almost complete abandonment ca. 1200 cal. BC. Although the southern Deccan region as a whole may have witnessed demographic increase, as well as subsistence and cultural continuity, at this time, this broader pattern of continuity and resilience is punctuated by local examples of abandonment and mobility driven by an increasing practical and political concern with water

Copper Smelting Slags at Ingaldhal Mines, Karnataka: Early Historic Satavahana Links

The study of old mining sites from archaeometallurgical perspectives is an area which is still not systematically undertaken in the Indian context. Whereas geological survey reports, both present and past going back to British geological reports, have generally taken care to report old workings, the finds of archaeometallurgical slag heaps have not merited that much attention. This paper reports the explorations into finds of old workings for copper mining in the region of Ingaldhal, Karnataka. A slag heap was also indentified in the vicinity, with russet coloured ware associated with the early historic Satavahana period. Analyses of the slags confirmed them to be from copper smelting, very likely from sulphide ores. Given that some old timbers from the Ingaldhal mine have yielded carbon dates of the 1–2nd century, this is consistent with the notion that copper could have been mined and smelted from this region by at least the early historic Satavahana period. Given that inscriptional records of early mining activity are not very common; such field-based investigations assume greater importance in piecing together the probable historical trajectories