Early History of Orissa

SR No.: 006922
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Amarchand Mittal
Publisher: Jain Cultural Research Society
Publication Year: 1957
Total Pages: 506
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 9 MB

Page 80

THE PALAEOLITHIC PERIOD
55
Kamata-Quarry 'C'
This Quarry yielded many artifacts, one of them having been obtained from the greatest depth among the whole series of excavations. This was a heavy split boulder having a straight cropping edge at one side, thick at the opposite margin, and suitable for use as a holder. This was followed much higher up by a thick discoidal chopper. Then came a transverse cleaver on pebble and an ovate biface of crude workmanship. A thick discoidal tool on boulder was discovered nearby at a slightly greater depth than the uppermost tools in this trench.
The second trench was comparatively richer in tools. The earliest was a thick chopper with upright holder and a convex working edge opposite. Another smaller one of similar type came after this. It was followed by an amygdaloidal biface and an irregular flake-knife showing a large cortical surface on the dorsal face. The bulb, on the ventral face, is at one lateral margin and the un. prepared striking platform makes an indeterminable angle (because it was broken) with the ventral. These few tools were followed by a layer much more prolific in tools, most of them being well-worked bifaces of various types—oblong, ovate, amygdaloidal. A transverse cleaver with a body having the section of a parallelogram followed, while choppers of cruder workmanship with upright holder and convex sinuous margin opposite continued. This last type seems to have been influenced by the technique of manufacturing bifaces, for one chopper (No. 35-Ku. C. 51) resembles an ovate biface in form. The trimming of discoidal tools also became neater. Cleavers of irregular, indifferent workmanship had already appeared, and near
1. These numbers refer to the illustrations in Excayations in Mayurbhanj'.