Chalcolithic Age in India: Copper Age Cultures, Sites and Megalithic Culture

Overview

The Chalcolithic Age, or Copper Age, is the stage of Indian prehistory in which farming communities used copper alongside stone tools; in India it covers the Ahar-Banas, Kayatha, Malwa and Jorwe cultures of Rajasthan, central India and the Deccan, from about 3000 BCE to about 700 BCE, and it was followed in the south by the megalithic culture of iron-using people.

Chalcolithic Age: The Copper Age in India

What Is Chalcolithic Age? Meaning of the Copper Age

The word joins two Greek words, khalkos, copper, and lithos, stone, and is pronounced KAL-kuh-LI-thik. Around 1900 writers began to use it in place of the older name Eneolithic. The age followed the Neolithic and came before the Bronze Age, and even in it stone tools were still the ones most used: copper was added to the toolkit; it did not replace stone.

The name fits the evidence. The sites of this age yield copper axes, arrowheads, spearheads, fish hooks and bangles, a copper razor and even part of a furnace for smelting copper, but beside them lie stone blades by the thousand: more than 30,000 at Navdatoli alone.

Chalcolithic Age Time Period: The Four Cultures of India

Timeline from 3000 BCE to 500 BCE with one bar per culture. Ahar-Banas in Rajasthan, 3000 to 1500 BCE. Kayatha in Malwa, 2400 to 2000 BCE. Malwa culture, 1600 to 1300 BCE, with a dashed extension to 2000 BCE because calibrated dates suggest an earlier start. Jorwe in the Deccan, 1400 to 700 BCE. Ochre Coloured Pottery in the Ganga-Yamuna doab, 2000 to 1500 BCE. Megaliths and iron in the south from about 1000 BCE, drawn as an open arrow.

The Copper Age in India flourished mainly in four farming communities: Ahar or Banas, Kayatha, Malwa and Jorwe. They shared painted pottery and the use of copper, but each had its own tradition of pottery design, and their dates overlap, as Figure 1 shows.

Chalcolithic cultures in India: region, sites and pottery (dates in Figure 1).
Culture Region Key sites Pottery
Ahar-Banas South-eastern Rajasthan Gilund, Balathal Black-and-red, white designs
Kayatha Malwa, near Ujjain Kayatha Painted in brown
Malwa Central India, parts of Maharashtra Navdatoli, Eran, Nagda Red or orange, black designs
Jorwe Maharashtra, into Malwa Inamgaon, Daimabad Red and orange, black geometric

Chalcolithic Age Tools, Pottery and Houses

Copper was the new metal, but stone still did most of the work. The Ahar-Banas people used the copper ores of the Aravalli range to make axes, while at Navdatoli on the Narmada more than 30,000 blades, cores and flakes of chalcedony, a hard stone from the river bed, were found; each household there seems to have made its own tools.

  • Metal work: Kayatha had advanced copper metallurgy beside a stone blade industry, and Daimabad had part of a copper-smelting furnace and a coppersmith’s workshop with a copper razor.
  • Painted pottery: Ahar’s black-and-red ware carried white lines and dots; Malwa ware was red or orange, painted in black with geometric, floral, animal and human designs; Jorwe ware was red and orange with black geometric patterns.
  • Houses: Malwa people mostly lived in round wattle-and-daub huts, with small round huts for storing grain, while Gilund in Rajasthan had mud-brick houses with clay-lined ovens and storage pits.

Houses at Navdatoli had lime on their floors and walls to keep insects out, a fireplace, and a stone slab for grinding grain. In the Jorwe villages most people lived in small single-room houses, while the chiefs lived in large houses with several rooms and granaries, an early sign of difference in rank within a village.

Difference Between Neolithic and Chalcolithic Age

The Neolithic and the Chalcolithic were both ages of farming villages, so the difference lies in tools and in how far the villages reached. Neolithic people worked with polished stone; Chalcolithic people added copper to stone, painted their pottery, and spread farming into the Deccan, central India and Rajasthan. The earlier age is the subject of the Neolithic Age in India.

Difference between Neolithic and Chalcolithic Age in India.
Feature Neolithic Age Chalcolithic Age
Tools Polished stone axes, mortars and pestles Copper axes and blades with stone blades
Pottery Mostly handmade; none at the earliest levels Painted ware: black-and-red, red and orange
Where Mehrgarh (now in Pakistan), Kashmir, the south, the Ganga plain Rajasthan, Malwa, the Deccan
Time From about 8,000 years ago at Mehrgarh About 3000 to 700 BCE in India

Chalcolithic Culture and Chalcolithic Sites in India

Ahar-Banas Culture: Gilund, the Largest Chalcolithic Site, and Balathal

The Ahar-Banas culture grew on the banks of the Ahar, Banas and Berach rivers in south-eastern Rajasthan, from about 3000 to 1500 BCE. More than 90 of its sites are known; its people grew wheat and barley and made axes from Aravalli copper. Its typical black-and-red ware once gave it the name black and red ware culture.

Map of north, central and western India with ten numbered Chalcolithic sites and the rivers drawn. Ahar-Banas culture in Rajasthan: Gilund, the largest site; Balathal, a fortified village; Ganeshwar, which supplied copper to Harappa. Kayatha and Malwa cultures: Kayatha, the earliest farming settlement of Malwa, and Navdatoli on the Narmada, with its chalcedony blades. Jorwe culture of the Deccan: Daimabad with five phases, Inamgaon on the Ghod, and the type site Jorwe. North and east: Sinauli, with its burials and carts, and Pandu Rajar Dhibi in West Bengal. The Aravalli, the Deccan and the Arabian Sea are labelled.
  • Gilund: Locally called Modiya Magari, the bald habitation mound; excavated by B. B. Lal in 1959-60; mud-brick and burnt-brick structures, humped bull figurines, and a cache of more than 100 seal impressions found in 2003 and dated to 2100-1700 BCE.
  • Balathal: In Udaipur district; discovered by V. N. Misra in 1962-63 and excavated from 1994 to 2000; a well-fortified settlement with wheat, barley, sheep, goat and cattle, and the earliest evidence of leprosy in the Indian subcontinent.
  • Ganeshwar: In Sikar district near the Khetri copper belt, dated to about 2500-2000 BCE; nearly one thousand pieces of copper, with arrowheads, spearheads, fish hooks and bangles; it supplied copper objects to Harappa.

Kayatha and Malwa Cultures: Chalcolithic Sites of Central India

Kayatha, in the Ujjain district on the Choti Kali Sindh river, a tributary of the Chambal, is the type site of the Kayatha culture, discovered by V. S. Wakankar in 1964. It is the earliest known farming settlement in the present-day Malwa region, and its layers run from the Kayatha culture through the Ahar and Malwa cultures to the early historical period, one above the other.

  • Farming and herds: The Malwa people grew wheat, barley, legumes and later rice, and kept cattle, sheep, goats and pigs.
  • Settlements: Most had no planning, but some of the largest sites had planned layouts, large houses and public buildings.
  • Beliefs: Bull idols, the worship of trees, snakes and goddesses, and altars for fire sacrifices.
  • Sites: Kayatha, Nagda, Vidisha, Eran, Mandsaur and Navdatoli, and in Maharashtra Daimabad and Inamgaon.

Navdatoli, across the Narmada from Maheshwar, was excavated by the Deccan College between 1957 and 1959. Its four stages are each marked by their own pottery, and its blades were often longer than those of other sites. Objects of sea shell at Malwa sites point to trade with the coast of Gujarat, such as Bharuch.

The farmers of the Malwa plains also appear in the rock paintings of Bhimbetka. The paintings of its third period, the Chalcolithic, show the contact and exchange between the cave dwellers and these settled farming communities: pottery and metal tools are drawn, and the paintings and the Chalcolithic pots often share motifs such as cross-hatched squares and lattices. The vividness of the earlier paintings is gone from them.

Jorwe Culture and Daimabad: Chalcolithic Culture of the Deccan

The Jorwe culture spread over large parts of Maharashtra and reached north into Malwa. More than 200 settlements are known, from large farming villages to seasonal camps of herders, which points to a chiefdom, a society led by chiefs. Its people traded with Karnataka for gold and ivory, and with Gujarat and the Konkan for fish, conch shell and haematite.

  • Daimabad: On the Pravara, a tributary of the Godavari; excavated by the Archaeological Survey of India in 1958-59, 1974-75 and 1975-79; five phases, Savalda, late Harappan, buff-and-cream ware, Malwa and Jorwe.
  • Harappan link: Two terracotta button seals and three potsherds with Harappan symbols in the second phase; the Malwa phase has a religious complex with fire altars and a mud platform.
  • Bronze hoard: A chariot yoked to two oxen, a buffalo, an elephant and a rhinoceros, found by a farmer in 1974; their date is disputed, since they contain more than 10 per cent arsenic.
  • Prakash: At the meeting of the Tapti and the Gomai, excavated by B. K. Thapar in 1955; its first period, about 1700-1300 BCE, is Chalcolithic.

The Jorwe dead were usually buried in urns under house floors or courtyards, with the feet cut off. Most Jorwe sites were abandoned around 1000 BCE, possibly because of famine or drought, and the culture was followed by the Iron Age megalithic culture of the Deccan.

Inamgaon: Life in a Chalcolithic Village of the Deccan

Inamgaon, on the river Ghod, a tributary of the Bhima, was occupied between 3600 and 2700 years ago and is one of the most thoroughly excavated Chalcolithic sites of the Deccan, with Malwa, early Jorwe and late Jorwe phases. Adults were usually buried straight, head to the north, sometimes within the houses, with vessels that probably held food and water.

  • A chief’s burial: One man was buried cross-legged in a large four-legged clay jar in the courtyard of a five-roomed house with a granary, one of the largest houses, in the centre of the settlement.
  • Grain and pulses: Seeds of wheat, barley, rice, pulses, millets, peas and sesame.
  • Herds and game: Cattle, buffalo, goat, sheep, dog, horse, ass and pig, with deer, antelope, hare, birds, crocodile, turtle, crab and fish; many bones carry cut marks from use as food.
  • Wild fruit: Ber, amla, jamun, dates and berries were collected.

Ochre Coloured Pottery, Copper Hoards and Sinauli: Chalcolithic Sites of North India

In the Ganga-Yamuna doab and to its west, the Ochre Coloured Pottery culture is generally dated to 2000-1500 BCE, from eastern Punjab to north-eastern Rajasthan and western Uttar Pradesh. Its pottery had a red slip that left an ochre colour on the fingers of the excavators, which gave the culture its name. Its people grew rice, barley and legumes and lived in houses of wattle and daub.

  • Copper hoards: Caches of copper objects, mainly in the western Ganga-Yamuna doab, from the first half of the second millennium BCE: flat axes, harpoons, double axes and swords with antenna grips.
  • Ores: The copper came from Khetri in Rajasthan, southern Haryana, Singhbhum in the east and Malanjkhand in Madhya Pradesh; the objects are 78 to 99 per cent copper.
  • Sinauli, Uttar Pradesh: Excavated by the Archaeological Survey of India in 2005-06 and 2018; more than a hundred burials dated to about 1865-1507 BCE, copper swords and wooden carts with solid wheels.
  • Pandu Rajar Dhibi, West Bengal: On the south bank of the Ajay, about 2000-1600 BCE, a Chalcolithic site in the east of the subcontinent.

The Sinauli carts were first presented as chariots, but several scholars point out that solid wheels belong to carts. The burials are linked with the Ochre Coloured Pottery and copper hoard cultures, which lived at the same time as the Late Harappan culture.

Features of Chalcolithic Age: Farming, Trade, Beliefs and Decline

  • Farming villages: Mixed farming and herding in river valleys; most sites were villages, a few large and planned.
  • Copper with stone: Copper for axes, arrowheads and bangles, but stone blades and tools were still in daily use.
  • Painted pottery: Each culture is known by its ware, from Ahar’s black-and-red to Jorwe’s black-on-red.
  • Exchange over long distances: Shell from Gujarat, gold and ivory from Karnataka, copper from the Aravalli to Harappa.
  • Beliefs: Bull figures, goddesses and fire altars; burials under house floors.

In the Deccan the age ended with decline and abandonment around 1000 BCE, and the megalithic culture and iron followed. The cities these cultures lived beside are traced in the Indus Valley Civilisation, and Daimabad also appears among the Harappan sites and their findings.

Megalithic Culture in India

What Is Megalithic Culture? Meaning, Spread and Time Period

The practice of erecting megaliths began about 3000 years ago and spread through the Deccan, south India, the north-east and Kashmir. Megaliths are also reported from the Vindhyas and the north-west, but the heaviest concentrations are in central and peninsular south India, where they emerged from the first millennium BCE, often with a rich range of iron tools and weapons.

Some megaliths stand on the surface, while other megalithic burials lie underground, marked only by a circle of boulders or a single standing stone. Their roots go back to the Neolithic and Chalcolithic, as the urn burials of Inamgaon show, and at Burzahom in Kashmir standing stones followed the Neolithic phase.

Types of Megaliths: Cist, Dolmen, Menhir, Stone Circle and Urn Burial

Megaliths come in many forms. Scholars divide them into sepulchral monuments, which hold the remains of the dead, and non-sepulchral ones, such as large patterned placements of stones over a wide area.

Five schematic drawings along a ground line. Cist: a stone box for the dead, some with a port-hole used as an entrance. Dolmen: upright stones under a flat cap stone. Menhir: a single tall standing stone. Stone circle: boulders in a ring over a burial pit. Urn burial: remains placed in a large clay urn. Note: the stones stand above the ground and the dead lie in the cist, pit or urn below; stone circles and boulders marked the place so people could return to the same burial.
  • Cist: A stone box for the dead; some have port-holes used as an entrance, through which those who died later were brought into the same grave.
  • Dolmen: Upright stones under a flat cap stone; at Marayoor in Kerala the Iron Age dolmens, called muniyaras, are made of four stones on edge covered by a fifth, the cap stone.
  • Menhir: A single tall standing stone, common in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala.
  • Stone circle: Boulders in a ring around a burial, as at Mangadu near Kollam.
  • Urn burial: The remains placed in a large clay urn, as at Adichanallur and Mangadu.
  • Topikal and kodaikal: Forms associated with Kerala.

Megalithic Burials: Iron, Black and Red Ware and Differences in Status

Megalithic burials share common features. The dead were generally buried with distinctive pots called Black and Red Ware, with tools and weapons of iron, and sometimes with skeletons of horses, horse equipment and ornaments of stone and gold.

  • Differences in status: At Brahmagiri one skeleton was buried with 33 gold beads, 2 stone beads, 4 copper bangles and a conch shell, while others had only a few pots.
  • Family graves: Some megaliths hold more than one skeleton, perhaps of one family, buried at different times.
  • Markers on the surface: Stone circles or boulders helped people return to the same burial place.

Megalithic Sites in South India: Brahmagiri, Hire Benakal, Maski, Mudumal and Mangadu

Map of peninsular India with seven megalithic sites and the Krishna, Tungabhadra, Bhima, Kaveri and Thamirabarani rivers. Brahmagiri in Karnataka: about 300 tombs in cists, one skeleton with 33 gold beads. Hire Benakal in Karnataka: almost 1000 megalithic structures, with port-holed dolmens. Maski in Karnataka: iron arrives in Period II. Hallur in Karnataka: the Iron Age begins between 1200 and 1000 BCE. Mudumal in Telangana: menhirs aligned to the sunrise and sunset at the solstices. Adichanallur in Tamil Nadu: about 169 burial urns. Mangadu near Kollam in Kerala: urns within circles of laterite stones.
  • Brahmagiri, Karnataka: Excavated by Mortimer Wheeler in 1947; about 300 tombs in rectangular cists, cist-circles and pit-circles; its iron sickles, spears, swords and arrowheads helped fix the culture sequence of south Indian prehistory.
  • Hire Benakal, Karnataka: In Koppal district, protected by the Archaeological Survey of India; almost 1000 megalithic structures, dominated by giant port-holed dolmens, and 11 painted rock shelters.
  • Maski, Karnataka: In Raichur district, excavated by Amalananda Ghosh in 1954; iron arrives in its second period with five forms of burial.
  • Mudumal, Telangana: Near the Krishna in Narayanapet district; menhirs aligned with sunrise and sunset at the solstices, and a rock with cup marks copying the Great Bear, Ursa Major.
  • Adichanallur, Tamil Nadu: In Thoothukudi district; about 169 clay urns with skeletons found in 2005, some with writing in Tamil-Brahmi.
  • Mangadu, Kerala: The Madankavu urn-burial site near Kollam; 28 laterite blocks in three circles, twelve large urns, Black and Red Ware, and 30 carnelian beads, 20 of them etched.

Mangadu also shows who built the megaliths. Its iron objects are wedges, knives, sickles and blades, with no war weapons such as spears or tridents, so its builders were mainly farmers; charcoal from one urn gave a date of 900 BCE.

Megalithic Culture and the Iron Age in South India

In India the Iron Age followed the Bronze Age and partly matches the megalithic cultures of south India; iron is one of the marks of the megaliths, especially in Kerala. The more securely dated early Iron Age sites of the south, Hallur in Karnataka and Adichanallur in Tamil Nadu, belong to about 1000 BCE.

  • Hallur: The move to the Iron Age took place between 1200 and 1000 BCE.
  • Kodumanal, Tamil Nadu: The earliest reliably dated iron furnace in Tamil Nadu, of the 5th century BCE.
  • Sivagalai, Tamil Nadu: Claims of iron smelting as early as the middle of the 4th millennium BCE rest on charcoal dates and are disputed.

Brahmagiri shows the whole sequence of the south in one place: a Neolithic or Neolithic-Chalcolithic first period, a megalithic second period and an early historical third. In the north, iron came into use in the Vedic period, the subject of the Vedic economy and Iron Age agriculture.

Previous Year UPSC-CSE Questions

Previous Year UPSC-CSE Questions By the end you will be able to draft model answers for the following UPSC questions. Each question carries a collapsible framework showing how to approach it in the exam.

  1. UPSC Mains 2023 GS-IExplain the role of geographical factors towards the development of Ancient India.
    Answer outline: how to structure the answer

    What the question asks, the main arguments, relevant examples and the direction of the conclusion. This is not a full model answer.

    Directive verb: Explain · Approach: Take each geographical factor in turn and show its effect with a named site.

    Introduction: Introduce geography as the setting that decided where early Indian communities settled and what they could make.

    Body (sub-themes to develop):

    • Rivers: the Banas, Berach, Narmada, Pravara and Ghod valleys hold the Chalcolithic villages.
    • Minerals: Aravalli and Khetri copper made Ahar and Ganeshwar metal centres that supplied Harappa.
    • Soils and stone: black soil at Daimabad, chalcedony at Navdatoli, laterite and granite for the megaliths of the south.
    • Climate: drought or famine as a likely cause of the Jorwe abandonment around 1000 BCE.

    Conclusion: Conclude that geography set the frame, while trade and technology let communities go beyond it.

  2. UPSC Prelims 2024 Prelims-GSConsider the following information: Archaeological Site – State – Description
    1. Chandraketugarh – Odisha – Trading Port town
    2. Inamgaon – Maharashtra – Chalcolithic site
    3. Mangadu – Kerala – Megalithic site
    4. Salihundam – Andhra Pradesh – Rock-cut cave shrines

    In which of the above rows is the given information correctly matched?

    1. a 1 and 2
    2. b 2 and 3
    3. c 3 and 4
    4. d 1 and 4
    How to approach this Prelims question

    Question type: Match the rows

    Approach: Step 1: read each row as two claims, the state and the description, and test both. Step 2: Chandraketugarh is in the 24 Parganas of West Bengal, so row 1 fails on its state. Step 3: Inamgaon is a Chalcolithic village on the Ghod in Maharashtra, so row 2 holds. Step 4: Mangadu, near Kollam, is a megalithic urn-burial site in Kerala, so row 3 holds. Step 5: Salihundam in Andhra Pradesh is known for Buddhist stupas and a monastery, not rock-cut cave shrines, so row 4 fails. Rows 2 and 3 are correct.

    Trap to watch: A correct description can sit with a wrong state, as with Chandraketugarh, which is in West Bengal, not Odisha.

    Key facts to recall:

    • (a) 1 and 2: wrong. Row 1 fails, because Chandraketugarh is in West Bengal, not Odisha.
    • (b) 2 and 3: right. Inamgaon is a Chalcolithic site in Maharashtra and Mangadu a megalithic site in Kerala.
    • (c) 3 and 4: wrong. Row 4 fails, because Salihundam is known for Buddhist stupas, not rock-cut shrines.
    • (d) 1 and 4: wrong. Both rows fail, on Chandraketugarh's state and on Salihundam's description.

    Answer signal: Option (b), the official answer: Inamgaon (Chalcolithic, Maharashtra) and Mangadu (megalithic, Kerala) are the two correct rows.

  3. UPSC Prelims 2021 Prelims-GSConsider the following pairs: (Historical place) : (Well-known for)
    1. Burzahom : Rock-cut shrines
    2. Chandraketugarh : Terracotta art
    3. Ganeshwar : Copper artefacts

    Which of the pairs given above is/are correctly matched?

    1. a 1 only
    2. b 1 and 2
    3. c 3 only
    4. d 2 and 3
    How to approach this Prelims question

    Question type: Match the pairs

    Approach: Step 1: test each pair against what the site is best known for. Step 2: Burzahom in Kashmir is a Neolithic site of pit dwellings, bone tools and later menhirs; it has no rock-cut shrines, so pair 1 is wrong. Step 3: Chandraketugarh, in the 24 Parganas of West Bengal, is rich in terracotta art, so pair 2 is right. Step 4: Ganeshwar, near the Khetri copper belt, yielded nearly a thousand copper objects and supplied Harappa, so pair 3 is right. Pairs 2 and 3 only.

    Trap to watch: Burzahom is a Neolithic site of pit dwellings and menhirs; rock-cut shrines belong to much later periods.

    Key facts to recall:

    • (a) 1 only: wrong. Burzahom is known for pit dwellings, not rock-cut shrines.
    • (b) 1 and 2: wrong. It keeps the wrong Burzahom pair and leaves out Ganeshwar.
    • (c) 3 only: wrong. Ganeshwar is right, but it leaves out Chandraketugarh, rightly paired with terracotta art.
    • (d) 2 and 3: right. Chandraketugarh is known for terracotta art and Ganeshwar for copper artefacts.

    Answer signal: Option (d), the official answer: Chandraketugarh with terracotta art and Ganeshwar with copper artefacts.

Sources

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This article draws on the NCERT textbooks and the other sources listed on this page. Dates for prehistoric sites are revised as new methods are applied.

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