Cist burials of the Kumaun Himalayas.

Cist burials of the Kumaun Himalayas. IntroductionMegaliths from Kumaun have been reported from the 19th century - theearliest reports go back to Henwood (1856). In 1991-93 we surveyed thevarious types of burials and found that they belong to different peoplesand periods. Some belong to the Chinese tea Chinese tea refers to tea leaves which have been processed using methods inherited from China. Tea leaf selectionThe highest grade white tea, yellow tea and green tea are made from tender tea shoots picked early Spring. plantation workers of thelast century; some to early Christians; some to the Rohellas whoattacked and plundered the region under Ali Mohammed Khan Ali Mohammed Khan (bf.1706 - September 15, 1748)[1] was a rohilla (Pashtun highlanders) chief who founded the Pathan (Pashtun) state of Rohilkhand in the northwestern region of the Uttar Pradesh state of India. in 1743-44.One of the Hindu sects (Nath Gosains) also bury their dead in a sittingposture in a stone-lined pit. Despite these confusing graves,prehistoric burials are also there. In our earlier article (Agrawal etal. 1991: 59-60) we tried to sort out the different types of burials, toidentify and isolate the earliest ones. The early cist burials, almostubiquitous in Kumaun, are found in large numbers from the valleys ofKoorman, Gomti, Western Ramganga (all tributaries of the Ganga system)and so forth, distributed over a large area. Even in our explorations ofshort seasons, we discovered cists in large numbers from the Ganai,Gwaldam, Baijnath and Bageshwar areas [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1OMITTED]. Their orientation seems to be determined by the slope of thehill or the terrace rather than by the cardinal directions, as was alsothe case in the Swat Swat(swät), district of the Malakand division, North-West Frontier Province, Pakistan. Saidu Sharif is the capital. The largely inaccessible region is reached by air and through mountain passes from the south and east. valley (Stacul 1987). Their large number and widedistribution area between the Garhwal and Kumaun divisions is indicativeof a long-persisting cultural tradition.MegalithsA variety of megalithic meg��a��lith?n.A very large stone used in various prehistoric architectures or monumental styles, notably in western Europe during the second millennium b.c. types are available in Kumaun: cairns,menhirs (monoliths), dolmenoids, cists and some suspected passage-gravesalso. We must, however, emphasize that these identifications are basedon surface observations. We have not excavated any so-called'megaliths' during our explorations. Some cists have beenexcavated by Garhwal University and, at our instance, by theArchaeological Survey of India The Archaeological Survey of India is an Indian government agency in the Department of Culture that is responsible for archaeological studies and the preservation of cultural monuments. . In 1991-93 explorations were carried outby us in several river valleys, i.e. the Gomati, the Koshi, the WesternRamganga, the Kauravgad, the Mansari Nala and the Gagas, to trace theoldest burial sites. Like the Swat valley in Pakistan, the megalithictradition in Kumaun also seems to be old (Joshi 1987) and perhapscontinued up to the early historical period. The following megalithictypes of burial were recorded.DolmenoidsSo far only one dolmenoid structure has been found in Almoradistrict Almora is a district of Uttarakhand state, India. The headquarters is at Almora.Almora is a district in the Kumaun division of Uttarakhand in India. Almora is famous for its cultural heritage, handicrafts, cuisine and wildlife. , located near the painted rock shelter A rock shelter is a shallow cave-like opening at the base of a bluff or cliff. Another term is rockhouse.Rock shelters form because a rock stratum such as sandstone that is resistant to erosion and weathering has formed a cliff or bluff, but a softer stratum, more subject at Petshal. Noantiquities were found around the dolmen dolmen(dŏl`mĕn, dōl–)[Breton,=stone table], burial chamber consisting of two or more upright stone slabs supporting a capstone or table, typical of the Neolithic period in Europe. See megalithic monuments. .CairnsThere are remains of six cairn cairn,pile of stones, usually conical in shape, raised as a landmark or a memorial. In prehistoric times it was usually erected over a burial. A barrow is sometimes called a cairn. circles on a terrace-like platform onthe eastern slope of Deolidana, about 3.5 km south of Almora. Thesecircles vary from 190 to 220 cm in diameter. One of the circles enclosesa menhir menhir(mĕn`hēr')[Breton,=long stone], in archaeology, name given to the single standing stones of Western Europe, and by extension to those of other lands. Their size varies and their shape is rough and squared, tapering toward the top. .Four cairns were found near the cup-mark site at Odyari, 14 kmnorthwest of Almora. Out of the four, two are circular; the remainingtwo are roughly rectangular.MenhirsA sandstone menhir (145 x 45 x 21 cm) was found on an agriculturalterrace of the river Gomati at Gagrigol on the Bageshwar-Almora road,located close to the local cist-burial site.As mentioned above, near the firing range at Deolidana a menhir wasfound enclosed by a cairn circle. This menhir is triangular in sectionand only 70 cm in height. Here several cup-marks and pits have been duginto the granite boulders exposed on the hill slope.There is an elaborate tradition of erecting memorial stones inKumaun, some of which may be traced back to the early centuries of theChristian era Christian eran.The period beginning with the birth of Jesus.Christian EraNounthe period beginning with the year of Christ's birthNoun 1. . Some of the most recent examples are located inPithoragarh and in Almora districts.Cist burialsIn 1960, on behalf of the Archaeological Survey of India, one of us(DPA) examined the graves at Malari (30 [degrees] 41 [minutes] N, 79[degrees] 55 [minutes] E), which is located in the Niti Valley at analtitude of 3800 m amsl, about 61 km beyond Joshimath on the bank ofDhauliganga in Chamoli district of Garhwal. As the graves had beendestroyed, all we could collect was intact and broken pots from thedestroyed sites. The pots were of red ware with handles and spouts, andwe discovered a bowl with a channelled mouth. The villagers informed usthat the stone-lined graves had contained complete inhumations, and somealso had secondary burials. A few bronze tripods, some horse-harnessingequipment and horse burials had also been discovered. Though it wasnecessary to depend upon the villagers' account, the accuracy ofthese reports was also corroborated by Dabral's report (1968) andwas found to be fairly reliable (Agrawal et al. 1991).Dabral (1968) was fortunate to examine 10 burials at Malari. In one,the dead body was inhumated in a crouching posture and few utensils wereplaced near the head. Of 10 burials, two were horse burials. He also hasreported red-ware shapes and bronze utensils from these graves. He hastentatively placed these burials between the 5th and 1st centuries BCand has ascribed them to the Sakas, who were then flourishing in thegreater part of Central and Western Himalaya.PotteryAs many of these burials have lost some of their slabs, pottery wasfound exposed in two cists at Ganai or Chaukhutia [ILLUSTRATION FORFIGURE 1 OMITTED]:* A squat pot in red ware, found in burial no. 1, was fired at a lowtemperature and has a thin fabric.* A grey-ware bowl of thin fabric with featureless rim and flatbottom [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 2B OMITTED], along with a pedestalledbowl and fragments of two other pots, was found from burial no. 4. Thegrey-ware bowl, of thin fabric, contains two incised parallel lines onthe neck ([ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 2B OMITTED]; compare with Ghaligai PdIV, Stacul 1987: figure 31e, f).* A pedestalled (chalice-type) bowl of medium fabric with a thinsection, with a short out-turned rim ([ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 2COMITTED]; compare with Stacul 1987: figure 32g, h).* A black-ware bowl with a featureless rim with thin section and afine fabric ([ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 3D OMITTED]; compare with GhaligaiPd 1 pot in Stacul 1987: figure 7e, f).* A red-ware bowl with convex sides of a fine fabric and thin section([ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 3E OMITTED]; compare with Stacul 1987: figure14b, Ghaligai Pd II) were found from burial no. 4.In the 1980s the site was again explored by a team of GarhwalUniversity; a small-scale excavation (Nautiyal & Khanduri 1991)yielded horse burials. They also report two spouted pots, one with asplayed-out mouth. These pots bear vertical and horizontal groovedlines, forming a geometric pattern all along the body and also on thehandle. A small pot was decorated in black on the neck with an angularchain design.In Pakistan considerable excavation work has been carried out by theItalian (Stacul 1987) expeditions, as also by Dani (1967; 1978), in theSwat valley. Gupta has shown that a long sequence of cultures thrived inthe Swat valley from the Ghaligai Level I (2400-2100 BC) to Level VII(400-300 BC) (Gupta 1979: 206-19). Dani has described these cultures,mainly known from their burials, as Gandhara Grave Cultures.The grey and red wares [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURES 2, 3 OMITTED] thatwe have collected, associated with the cists, have close analogues fromGhaligai Levels I, II, III. A potsherd pot��sherd? also pot��shardn.A fragment of broken pottery, especially one found in an archaeological excavation.potsherdNouna broken piece of pottery [pot + schoord from a Kumauni cist appears to bea broken part of the nose of a face-pot (e.g. plate XXXIX a-d inAntonini & Stacul 1972). If some of these cists go back to themiddle of the 3rd millennium BC, they could be contemporary withGhaligai periods 1 and 2 of the Swat valley complex reported by Stacul(1987; 1992).Stacul (1992) has compared some of the Swat burial complexes withthose of Kashmir. From Malari (Garhwal), the crouched burial, comparableto Burzahom (Kashmir), has been reported. The main common tool type isthe rectangular stone sickle. Linguists have found affinities betweenthe words Khash, Kash, Kassite, Kashmir, Kashgar, etc; and the warriorclass of Kumaun is still called khash or khashia. They are supposed tobe pre-Vedic Indo-Europeans. If these linguistic equations are right,some of these burial complexes may belong to early Indo-Europeanmigrations into the western and central Himalayan regions.There are also some red-ware cooking pots [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 2AOMITTED], closely resembling period II red-ware associates of PaintedGrey Ware (PGW PGW Philadelphia Gas WorksPGW Publishers Group WestPGW Precision Guided WeaponsPGW Payment GatewayPGW Pressure Gas WeldingPGW Pesticides in Ground WaterPGW Parallel Gap WeldingPGW Propylene glycol/waterPGW Project on Girls and Women ) at Hastinapur (e.g. XVIIIa, figure 11, in Lal 1954-55:5-151). Khanduri & Nautiyal reported at the Bareilly Congress (1993)several red- and grey-ware dishes and bowls from the western Ramgangacists closely resembling the period II Hastinapur pottery types. Some ofthe pottery appears transitional to fully developed PGW types. Thepottery complex of Western Ramganga cist burials gives a distinctimpression of representing the transitional stage between the coarsegrey wares of the northwest and the de luxe PGW of the Gangetic valley.In view of the reported PGW sites like Thapli and others in Garhwal(Nautiyal & Khanduri 1991), the possibility of such a transition andgrowth is distinctly possible.Radiocarbon datesThe finding of several ancient iron-smelting sites in Kumaun (Agrawal& Kharakwal 1995) makes a distinct possibility of Kumaun being thesource of early iron for the PGW culture. From Uleni (near Almora), anearly iron-smelting site, we now have a radiocarbon date, PRL-1648,calibrated to 826-1022 BC. It indicates that towards the beginning ofthe 1st millennium BC iron ores of Kumaon were exploited and perhapsiron supplied to the northern PGW settlements.This date is important because some of the cist burials yield PGWpottery forms, as discussed above.Another radiocarbon date, PRL-1592, from Gagrigol, Almora District,gives a calibrated date of 2666-2562 BC. This charcoal sample wascollected by us from the upper filling of a cist exposed by the roadcutting. It is not strictly a stratified sample as it has not beenobtained through proper excavations, though we did scrape, clean andstudy the section thoroughly before collecting the sample. It appearsthat the cist-burial tradition in this area continued for more than 1500years, from c. 2600 BC onwards. Of course, at this stage, one cannotderive important conclusions from only a couple of radiocarbon dates.ReferencesAGRAWAL, D.P., D. BHATT, S. MALAIYA & J. KHARAKWAL. 1991.Archaeology of Kumaun: problems and prospects, Man and environment 16:59-63.AGRAWAL, D.P. & J. KHARAKWAL. 1995. Kumaun: archaeology andtradition. Almora: Almora Book Depot.ANTONINI, C.S. & J. STACUL. 1972. The protostoric graveyards ofSwat (Pakistan). Rome: ISMEO.DABRAL, S.P. 1968. Uttarakhand ka Itihas: Katyuri Yuga Taka ta��ka?n.See Table at currency.[Bengali . Dogadda:Veergatha Prakashan, Garhwal.DANI, A.H. 1967. Timargarha and the Gandhara grave culture The Gandhara grave (or Swāt) culture emerges from ca. 1600 BC, and flourishes in Gandhara ca. 1500 BC to 500 BC (i.e. possibly up to the time of Pāṇini). , AncientPakistan 3: 1-407.1978. Gandhara grave culture and the Aryan problem, Journal ofCentral Asian Studies Central Asian studies is the discipline of studying the culture, history, and languages of Central Asia. The roots of Central Asian studies as a social science discipline goes to 19th century Anglo-Russian Great Game. 1(1): 42-56.GUPTA, S.P. 1979. 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Further evidence for 'The Inner Asia Complex' fromSwat, in G.L. Possehl, South Asian archaeology studies: 111-22. NewDelhi: Oxford University Press & IBH IBH Inclusion Body HepatitisIBH Initial Beachhead (US Army)IBH Intermediate Block Home (signal)IBH Integral Blackman-Harris FunctionIBH Iglesia Bautista Horeb .