Neolithic Ashmounds of the Deccan, India: A Posthumanist Perspective

It is now four full decades since Andrew Sherratt (1981) coined the interesting concept of the ‘Secondary Products Revolution’. He developed it for highlighting how, proceeding from the use of cattle and sheep/goats primarily as meat-giving sources in the initial phase of the Neolithic in Eurasian areas, secondary products of these domesticates began to play a dominant role and, in fact, effected a revolutionary change in the later Neolithic stage. In particular, Sherratt drew attention to the role played by milk and wool in daily life and the use of cattle for traction in tillage and transport. This concept has been very helpful to researchers in understanding the developmental trajectories of various early agro-pastoral communities in the Old World. Sherratt (1981: 263) even felt persuaded to state that “[t]he secondary products revolution marked the birth of the kinds of society characteristic of modern Eurasia.” In this paper I intend to broaden the scope of the concept of secondary products and add cattle-dung to the list, which is a waste product resulting from animal-keeping. Taking a cue from posthumanist thought, I have recently hinted at the possibility of considering ashmounds representing burnt cow-dung formations as an agentive power that actively shaped the life-world of the Neolithic pastoralists of the Deccan region in India (Paddayya 2019: 120). In this paper I want to expatiate upon this observation. First of all, I will briefly introduce readers to the topic of ashmounds and the different views and opinions offered over a long period of time about their age and origin. I will then explore the possibility of bringing the whole theme within the fold of posthumanist conceptions of the very nature of archaeological record

The acheulean handaxe : More like a bird's song than a beatles' tune?

© 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. KV is supported by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research. MC is supported by the Canada Research Chairs Program, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research of Canada, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the British Columbia Knowledge Development Fund, and Simon Fraser UniversityPeer reviewedPublisher PD

Modeling the Past: The Paleoethnological Evidence

This chapter considers the earliest Paleolithic, Oldowan (Mode 1), and Acheulean (Mode 2) cultures of the Old Continent and the traces left by the earliest hominids since their departure from Africa. According to the most recent archaeological data, they seem to have followed two main dispersal routes across the Arabian Peninsula toward the Levant, to the north, and the Indian subcontinent, to the east. According to recent discoveries at Dmanisi in the Caucasus, the first Paleolithic settlement of Europe is dated to some 1.75 Myr ago, which indicates that the first “out of Africa” took place at least slightly before this date. The data available for Western Europe show that the first Paleolithic sites can be attributed to the period slightly before 1.0 Myr ago. The first well-defined “structural remains” so far discovered in Europe are those of Isernia La Pineta in Southern Italy, where a semicircular artificial platform made of stone boulders and animal bones has been excavated. The first hand-thrown hunting weapons come from the site of Scho¨ningen in north Germany, where the first occurrence of wooden spears, more than 2 m long, has been recorded from a site attributed to some 0.37 Myr ago. Slightly later began the regular control of fire. Although most of the archaeological finds of these ages consist of chipped stone artifacts, indications of art seem to be already present in the Acheulean of Africa and the Indian subcontinent

Economic transactions in our deep past

The much longer period of mankind’s past is customarily called ‘prehistory’, as if before writing began, there could be no ‘history’. It is, however, true that during what we may call ‘deep past’, there were features in the organisation of human societies that were different from what was to be found when towns arose and civilisations came to be established. This article examines how in the realm of exchange and what goes today by the name of commerce, the early societies were different from their later successors. Taking India, especially South India as our field, we examine how systems of exchange existed in early societies without the development of a ‘business’ class.</jats:p