4.3 Crafts, Pottery and Iron Industry
Crafts, Pottery and Iron Industry
2020-04-27 11:42 :55
Art
- #todo
- Rock paintings found at megalithic sites show fighting scenes, dancing figures, horse riders, flor, birds and sun motifs.
- They give insight about lives and experience of the people.
- Piklihal shows megalithic painting of horse riders carrying metal axes.
- In central India many tribes of Jharkahand such as Munda, Oraon, Gonds etc still practice Megalithic paintings. Megalithic age in Jharkhand has been dated to 3000BC.
Craft and Pottery
- Evidence of well developed traditions of specialised crafts.
- Differenk kinds of Pottery have been found including BRW.
- Pots with lids decorated in shape of birds and animals suggest ceremonial wares.
- Evidence of bead making. Grave goods have given etched carnelian beads and beads of other materials.
- Copper and Bronze artefacts such as utensils, bowls and bangles some of which are silver and gold have also been found.
- Anthropomorphic figures have also been found at Mottur in Tamil Nadu embedded by digging the bedrock. A pedestal makes it look like a sitting figure. They may have been connected with Ancestral worship.
- Some sites must have been centres of craft production.
- The distribution of non local items of precious and semi precious metals suggest Inter regional trade.
- Gold ornaments have been ofund in Adichannlur that is not endemic to the place along with Tamil brahmi inscriptions.
Iron Industry
- Iron objects outnumber any other metals in megalithic sites.
- Ex Utensils, weapons like arrowhead, spearheads, swords; carpentary tools like axes, chisels, adzes and Agricultural equipments like sickles, hoes etc.
- At Pazhayannur and Machad Iron artefacts have been found of considerable purity and evidence of other materials that suggest Megalithic people knew the art of making alloys.
Reference :
- Upinder Singh Megalithic Chapter