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Iron Age India


Iron Age India, the Iron Age in the Indian subcontinent (South Asia), succeeds the Late Harappan (Cemetery H) culture, also known as the last phase of the Indus Valley Tradition. The main Iron Age archaeological cultures of India are the Painted Grey Ware culture (1200 to 600 BCE) and the Northern Black Polished Ware (700 to 200 BCE).

R. Tewari (2003) radiocarbon dated iron artefacts in Uttar Pradesh, including furnaces, tuyeres and slag between c. 1800 and 1000 BCE. Iron using and iron working was prevalent in the Central Ganga Plain and the Eastern Vindhyas from the early second millennium BCE. The beginning of the use of iron has been traditionally associated with the eastward migration of the later Vedic people, who are also considered as an agency which revolutionised material culture particularly in eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The new finds and their dates suggest that a fresh review is needed. Further, the evidence corroborates the early use of iron in other areas of the country, and attests that India was indeed an independent centre for the development of the working of iron.

The earliest Iron Age sites in South India are Hallur, Karnataka and Adichanallur, Tamil Nadu at around 1000 BCE. Archaeologist Rakesh Tewari, the Director, U.P. State Archaeological Department, India, stated that studies of the site at Karnataka implied "that they had already been experimenting for centuries" as by that time they were able to work with large artifacts. Shyam Sunder Pandey suggested that “the date of the beginning of iron smelting in India may well be placed as early as the sixteenth century BC” and “by about the early decade of thirteenth century BCE iron smelting was definitely known in India on a bigger scale”.


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