Pleistocene Rock Art of India
by
Ajay Pratap,
Professor,
Project Director,
ICHR, Rock Art of Mirzapur Project,
Department of History,
Faculty of Social Sciences,
Banaras Hindu University,
Varanasi - 221 005
Friends,
Every Project Director, such as I, of a field-survey based project, The Documentation and Analysis of the Rock Art of Uttar Pradesh with Special Reference to the Rock Art of Mirzapur District, Uttar Pradesh, in this case, is basically in a multivariate situation, and thus some questions, even older ones, find the context of expression, only when the post-fieldwork stage of analysis of the data collected is reached. Given below are some outstanding questions from mine. In an attempt to find probable answers to these I tend to think that we shall have to re-read what Mr. Robert Bednarik has had to say about the Pleistocene Rock Art of India. Thus, and therefore, I shall have to search the JSTOR to see if I may be able to find that relevant reading. Kindly wait for this upload!
Here are some odd-bodd questions:
1. Did the painters of prehistory already know that Haemetite drawings on rocks tend to wither and waste-away if they are exposed to the elements?
2. How else do we explain most of the paintings at Likhaniya Dari, Chuna Dari, Wyndham, Morhana Pahar to have been executed inside (of cave shelters) so to speak?
As the tradition of painting on rocks, some argue (Bednarik, ????), started in India, sometime in the upper palaeolithic, there is all the reason to believe that there gradually grew cumulative experience regarding the propensity of various types of coloring material when applied to rock surfaces.
3. So it is that a majority of paintings at the sites named above are positioned in locations so that they have the natural advantage of protection from the weather.
4. To what extent suggested by hypothetical images are hypothetical animals are intentionally or un-intentionally simulated or suggested?
5. To what extent in the Vindhyan Rock Art sites the play with images suggest creative imagination to the extent that the painted icon or panel supersedes or goes beyond the concern of realistic depiction?
Hi,
I am uploading, most tentatively, some very interesting papers of Mr. Robert Bednarik, who is a world acknowledged authority on rock art, and, this is for such readers of this blog who do not already know of it. If I were you, I would start reading it backwards. First, the section on "Discussion", on page 9, and then whichever way you may please. This is insofar as the very first of these papers is concerned. I shall provide some comments on the others. Side by side, I've here uploaded some primary data pertaining to our own project and its outcomes in order to determine whether at least at the WYN 3 shelter the rock painting, or at least a few of them, actually date to the Late Pleistocene.
It would appear from the dates provided by Ruman Bannerjee that these calcite deposits are almost 14,000 B.P. to 12,000 years B.P. old and are therefore certainly of the late or terminal Pleistocene in age.
I shall be happy to hear from anybody on this subject at apratap_hist@bhu.ac.in.
Thanks.
Ajay,

Courtesy URL: http://home.vicnet.net.au/~auranet/eip1/shared_files/reddy3.pdf

Courtesy JSTOR: http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/20474997.pdf
Consulted on 12.1.2013

Courtesy JSTOR: http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/25800655.pdf?acceptTC=true
Consulted on 12.1.2013

Courtesy JSTOR: http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/40463849.pdf?acceptTC=true
Consulted on 12.1.2013

Courtesy JSTOR: http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/40467339.pdf
Consulted on 12.1.2013
(Proper references to be provided. Kindly wait!)
Consulted on 7.1.2013 and 11.1.2013
Subsequent to Mr. Robert Bednarik's hope expressed in the article above I am taking the liberty of posting here Dates provided (ICPMS and U-TH) for Calcite Samples of Wyndham 3 by Mr. Ruman Bannerjee, Doctoral Candidate, Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Bristol, United Kingdom, who visited our project sites Likhaniya Dari (LKH 1), Chuna Dari (CHD 1 and CHD 2), and Wyndham 3, 4 and 5 sites, in August-December 2010.
The first of these dates and the .pdf file thereof came through to us, sometime in December 2011, and the other a month or so ago. I have used these here with the author's permission, and shall cite their proper reference in due course.
Thank you.
Ajay
Calcite Deposits and Rock Paintings at CHD 2

Calcite Deposits and Rock Paintings at WYN 3

Palaeolithic Panel (?) at Likhaniya Dari LKH 1 site

Another view of this painted panel



How come we find Pleistocene deposits of this type here has been discussed by us elsewhere (Pratap, n.d.). Here in brief, we would like to reiterate that the Geomorphic processes operating in the Mid-Ganga Valley during Terminal Pleistocene caused repeated cycles of desiccation and hydration leading to the formation of Calcareous deposits in hardpan and kankar formations within the Ganga Valley (Pandey 2010), and in the Vindhyan Highlands just South of the Middle Ganga Valley these same Geomorphological processes led to the leaching of the calcareous salts from the thin highland soils leaving behind film-like deposits of Ca CO3 at places like Wyndham Waterfalls and Chuna Dari where these deposits are found today.
However, if as we have argued there did exist a Palaeolithic or at best an Upper Palaeolithic Population in the Highlands Vindhyas then they must have inhabited diverse locations within this vast 1200 square miles area and must therefore have left behind such paintings of their period, which with or without the benefit of these calcareous deposits in each and every case can and may be identified as contemporary with these other paintings which we may no doubt argue as being of Palaeolithic in origin.
Therefore, `style' or `style in rock art' comes to our aid, as do the method of contextual analysis. Just as there are many elements of style in common between selected motifs, icons and panels at all our sites, similarly the evidence of faunal exploitation at the Damdama site also comes to our aid. Within the Mesolithic layers excavated at Damdama, the earliest of layers show a high density of the bones of Black Buck Deer. The panel at LKH 1 given above in fact does contain two depictions of what we think is are Black Buck Deer. Hence, to our most tentative hypothesis, that amongst the very many paintings and compositions found in the rock paintings at Likhaniya Dari, or LKH 1 Site, of which some are clearly early historic in origin, this one, the one with the Blackbucks and numerous very elementary, comparative to the later paintings here, and elsewhere in the ites we have studied thus far in the Vindhyan Ranges, is possibly not only the oldest, but is also Palaeolithic.
Bibliography
Banerjee, R. (In preparation) Rock Art (India) as the Medium for Social Change. Unpublished PhD Thesis, Bristol: University of Bristol.
Bednarik, R.G. 2008. More on Rock Art Removal. The South African Archaeological Bulletin 63(187): 82-4.
Bednarik, R.G. 1994. Art Origins. Anthropos 89(1/3): 169-80.
Bednarik, R.G. 1994. The Pleistocene Art of Asia. Journal of World Prehistory 8(4): 351-75.
Bednarik, R.G. 2003. A Major Change in Archaeological Paradigm. Anthropos 98(2): 511-20.
Bednarik, R.G. 2008. More on Rock Art Removal. The South African Archaeological Bulletin 63(187): 82-4.
Pandey, R.P. 2010. Late Quaternary Formations in the Ganga Valley. Tripathi, V and Upadhyay, P. (Eds.) Archaeology of the Ganga Basin: Paradigm Shift. Delhi. Sharada Publishing House. 79-82.
Pratap, A. Mss. Some Considerations of the Rock Art of Chambal Valley. Seminar Presentation. Center for South Asian Studies. University of Cambridge.
Pratap, A. Mss. The Rock Art Imagery of Vindhyas, Uttar Pradesh. Powerpoint presentation made to the CABA (Central Advisory Body of Archaeology), Archaeological Survey of India, 29th October 2011, New Delhi.
Pratap, A. 1993. Rock Art of Chambal Valley. Inside Outside. Mumbai.
Pratap, A. and Kumar, N. 2009. Rock art at Wyndham Falls, Mirzapur, India. Antiquity’s Project Gallery: http://antiquity.ac.uk/antiquityNew/projgall/pratap321/
Pratap, A. 2011a. Recent Surveys at Likhaniya Dari, Chuna Dari, Wyndham Falls and Morhana Pahar, Uttar Pradesh. Vikramshila Journal of Social Sciences. Bhagalpur.
Pratap, A. 2011b. Prehistoric Rock Art Imagery of the Vindhyas, Uttar Pradesh. In Ancient India. New Series 1. Archaeological Survey of India. New Delhi.
Thomas, P.K., Joglekar, P.P., Misra, V.D., Pandey, J.N., and J.N. Pal, 2002. Faunal remains from Damdama: Evidence for the Mesolithic Food Economy of the Gangetic Plain. pp.366-380. In Misra, V.D. and Pal, J.N. (Eds.) Mesolithic India. University of Allahabad. Allahabad.
.............
Contd.)
Thank you.
Ajay