Raghunath S. Pappu. Acheulian culture in peninsular India: an ecological perspective.
Korisettar, Ravi
xiv+170 pages, 45 figures, 9 tables. 2001. New Delhi: DK
Printworld; 81-246-0168-2 hardback Rs455.
R.S. Pappu has established a fairly good reputation for his
consistent research into the Acheulian culture of a part of peninsular
south India, during the last 35 years at least. His researches into the
Palaeolithic succession in the Archaean-Proterozoic Kaladgi Basin
(Karnataka, south India) have laid the basis of the present book. The
book also disposes of the lack of a single volume presenting the current
state of our knowledge of the Acheulian culture in peninsular India.
Peninsular India lies to the south of the extrapeninsula, including
the sub-Himalayan and central Himalayan regions and modern Pakistan, all
constituting the South Asian landmass. One is left wondering whether the
author has convinced himself that peninsular Acheulian culture can be
understood without these crucial geographical regions, to be able to
delineate the processes of colonization of South Asia during the Lower
Palaeolithic. There is an ever increasing body of new Lower Palaeolithic
evidence from the frontier geographical regions, including Nepal and
Central Himalaya; and this indicates that South Asia is a single larger
Acheulian culture area.
The book includes four chapters and two appendices, a comprehensive
bibliography, and a general index. Chapters 1 and 2 provide a lucid
account of the progress of research oil the Lower Palaeolithic (both
excavation and survey) and typotechnological aspects of Acheulian
culture. The introductory chapter clearly recognizes the Acheulian as
the earliest Lower Palaeolithic phase in peninsular India. Chapter 3, on
'Salient features', includes multidisciplinary data from a
diverse lattice of Quaternary environments. Despite his longstanding
experience of working on Quaternary stratigraphy and geology, Pappu
retains the traditional framework of vertical depositional sequences of
fluvial sediments and presents the associated Stone Age cultures.
Consequently, the book does not break new ground in our search for a new
paradigm that could be uniformly applied to studying the Acheulian sites
in fluvial environments across the peninsular landmass. Some landmark
investigations carried out in India, for instance on the Acheulian
culture of the Hunsgi-Baichbal valleys in south India, have made an
explicit attempt at a holistic understanding of the Acheulian culture in
a systemic framework. So also multidisciplinary investigations, in the
Thar Desert of Rajasthan and in the Belan Valley of north central India,
have been productive, with a promise of more exciting results. After
reaching a critical point, these projects were unfortunately terminated
but results of these investigations undoubtedly deserved more detailed
presentation in this book. Reviewers of Indian prehistory from outside
India would naturally fail to appreciate the fact that there are
Acheulian sites possessing a high degree of integrity with potential for
delineation of Acheulian culture processes and reconstruction of hominid behaviour in an absolute time frame. On the other hand, it is gratifying
to note that continuing research into the Acheulian culture of the
Hunsgi-Balchbal valleys, particularly at Isampur, have been completely
rewarding and have helped to push the antiquity of the Acheulian to 1.2
million years ago, displacing the controversy regarding the dating of
the Bori volcanic ash and the associated Acheulian industry in the Kukdi
valley of Maharshtra. Pappu, while subscribing to the half million year
age of the Bori ash (Appendix II) does not, however, mention the
fission-track dates placing the ash at 75 000 years ago. The problem of
dating the fluvial context (high-energy environment) sites will linger
on owing to imprecise understanding of the stratigraphic relationship of
the sedimentary facies as well as the intervening erosional events
within a fluvial basin. Therefore it is all the more compelling to
investigate sites in the inland ecosystems.
The fourth chapter, on the 'Acheulian cultural system',
clearly reveals the paucity of integrated multidisciplinary programmes,
barring the few mentioned above. As a result, Pappu encounters a series
of constraints on interpreting 'the cultural material to
reconstruct social and economic life of the communites ... and
reconstruct the cultural system in a comprehensive way' (p. 4).
However, he has ventured to arrive at a synthesis of the Acheulian
culture at a general level.
Since the first discovery of a Lower Palaeolithic artefact in
India, more than 130 years ago, the problem of the antiquity of
Acheulian culture, its ecological framework and the geomorphic and
geologic processes governing the state of preservation of the Acheulian
sites have remained poorly understood and unresolved till today. These
are some of the core issues even now demanding adequate discussion and
investigation. They only occupy the periphery of this book. In my own
survey of the literature on the Indian Lower Palaeolithic, and my
personal experience in the field, a proper mapping of the
palaeogeographic context of the Acheulian sites, as well as
identification of the extinct drainage networks and contemporary
sedimentary environments on the peninsular shield landscape are
prerequisites.
Through this book, Raghunath Pappu has placed on record his
commitment not only to the students of Indian Palaeolithic archaeology
but also the sponsor, the Indian Council of Historical Research, in New
Delhi. I greatly appreciate his sense of accountability. It is worthy of
emulation. So is his painstaking work in preparing a compendium of the
Indian Lower Palaeolithic, useful to both postgraduate students and
researchers. The book has been neatly printed with excellent line
drawings. However, proof reading, placement of figures and the quality
of the photographs leave much to be desired. Undoubtedly, Pappu's
efforts have provided a source book on Indian Acheulian culture, and
they deserve appreciation by students and researchers. A retrospect of
the Indian Lower Palaeolithic paves the way for planning ahead with the
new methodological tools at our disposal.
RAVI KORISETTAR
Department of History & Archaeology,
Karnatak University,
Dharwad 580-003 India.
(Email:
[email protected])
