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Abstract
During the South Indian Neolithic period (30001200 BC), the agro-pastoral inhabitants of the South Deccan/North
Dharwar region constructed large mounded features by heaping and burning accumulations of cattle dung. These ashmound features were comprised of a myriad of variegated strata of ash, vitried dung, and other culturally modied sediments, many of which reached monumental proportions. Ashmounds have been the subject of considerable debate since
coming to the attention of scholars in the early 19th century. Current debate has centered largely on the function and
spatial context of these features in relation to Neolithic settlement. This article examines the South Indian ashmounds
as monumental forms of architecture and the loci of ritual and ceremonial activity within the context of Neolithic
agro-pastoral landscape production. By situating ashmound construction within the social rhythm of cattle pastoralism
and carefully examining the emplotment, depositional histories, and post-Neolithic afterlives of these unique features this
paper argues that social practices likely originating in quotidian activities were gradually transformed into regular, public
ceremonial activities producing monumental forms, relating and reinforcing socio-symbolically charged information.
2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Ashmounds; South Indian Neolithic; Landscape; Monumentality; Ritual; Social memory
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: p-johansen@uchicago.edu.
0278-4165/$ - see front matter 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jaa.2004.05.003
310
Fig. 1. Locations of South Indian Ashmound Sites for which published data are available.
311
312
313
Fig. 2. Prole illustrating ashmound stratigraphy from the site of Kupgal (photo courtesy of Carla Sinopoli).
314
Table 1
Summary of frequently discussed ashmound sites and their characteristics (based on data from Allchin, 1963; Korisettar et al., 2001;
Krishna Sastry, 1979; Mujumdar and Rajaguru, 1966; Paddayya, 1991; Possehl, 1989; Rami Reddy, 1976; Shah, 1973)
Ashmound site
Available C14
dates
(Calibrated)
Number of
ashmounds
at site
Basal
rammed-earth
feature present
Thin sterile
lenses present
Flora
Fauna
Budihal-S
14002500 BC
34
Not reported
Yes
Hulikallu
Kakkera
Kodekal
Not reported
Not reported
2893 BC
2
2
1
Not reported
Yes
Yes
Not reported
Not reported
Yes
Horse gram,
hyacinth, barley,
jubejube, cherry,
emblic myrobalam
Not reported
Not reported
Jubejube
Kudatini
Kupgal
Mallur
Palavoy
Not reported
Not reported
Not reported
16802278 BC
1
3
2
4
Possible
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Not reported
Not reported
Not reported
Not reported
Not reported
Jubejube
Thanmandi
Thanda
Utnur
Wandalli
Not reported
Yes
Not reported
Not reported
Cattle
Not reported
Bualo, cattle, dog,
fowl, sheep/goat
Cattle, sheep/goat
Not reported
Cattle
Cattle, deer, pig,
sheep/goat
Not reported
23332850 BC
Not reported
1
1
Not reported
Not reported
Yes
Not reported
Not reported
Not reported
inhabited and conceptualized by its prehistoric occupants; a multitude of interconnected places in which
specic economic practices were conducted and social
and ideological relations mediated, maintained, modied, and reinvented. Landscape production involves
social and spatial practice, perception, and conception
as critical moments within historically and culturally
315
in the archaeological record of the South Indian Neolithic at several scales of analysis such as the region, site,
feature, and assemblage.
Physical setting
Ashmound sites of the South Indian Neolithic are located in north-eastern Karnataka state and western
Andhra Pradeshthe South Deccan/North Dharwar region (Fig. 1). This region is cross-cut by the upper
courses of the Bhima, Krishna, and Tungabhadra, three
major, shallow, wide, and slow moving rivers which ow
in a generally south-easterly direction towards the Bay
of Bengal. The physical landscape and geology of the region is characterized by a relatively at to undulating
terrain that is regularly traversed by granite-gneiss hills
and hill chains (Paddayya, 1991, p. 573). Between the
basalt deposits in the dolerite dykes and the Deccan
Trap-topped ingersols, the quartz available in the Dharwar deposits and the chert, chalcedony, and quartzite
available in nodule form in the rivers, there was abundant lithic raw material for the typical Neolithic ground
and pecked stone industries (Allchin, 1963; Paddayya,
1973). Within this geological region the two primary
types of rock formationsDharwar schists and quartzes
and Archaean granites and gneissgenerally produce
two distinct types of soils as they erode. The Dharwar
produce arable black cotton soils and the Archaean
granites produce a red sandy to loamy soil (Allchin,
1963, p. 8). The latter predominates in the hilly tracts selected by the Neolithic builders of ashmounds for site
location, while the former are found primarily in lower
lying areas, especially around the major rivers and generally away from most Neolithic sites. This focus on settlements away from the regions most arable land is
consistent with the emphasis on pastoralism and the
practice of low-risk, rain-fed agriculture present in the
Neolithic economy of the region.
The South Deccan/North Dharwar region is characterized today by a semi-arid climate with an annual rainfall that generally does not exceed 5060 cm and falls
between June and August during the southwest monsoon (Paddayya, 1973, p. 4). The regions semi-arid climate and seasonal rainfall patterns have created a
oral cover characterized by thorn and scrub bush forests dominated by species such as Acacia, Zysiphus,
and Dalbergia, which are interspersed with large tracts
of savanna grasslands (Rami Reddy, 1976, p. 114).
Paleoenvironmental reconstructions of the South Indian
Neolithic based primarily on paleosol analysis at the
ashmound site of Kupgal by Mujumdar and Rajaguru
(1966), palynological analysis of a marine core (SK 27
B/8) extracted from the inner continental shelf in coastal
Karnataka (Caratini et al., 1991), and the recovery of
botanical material from the excavated sites in the region
(Mittre and Ravi, 1990), indicate that the environment
316
317
Table 2
Archaeobotanical remains of domesticated and wild plant species from South Deccan/North Dharwar Neolithic sites (based on data
from Devaraj et al., 1995; Fuller, 2003; Kajale, 1989; Korisettar et al., 2002; Murty, 1989; Paddayya, 2001; Venkatasubbaiah and
Kajale, 1991)
Common name
Domestic species
Millets
Finger milleta
Kodo millet
Foxtail millet
Pulses
Large cereals
Wild species
Fruits
Species
Site
Eleusine coracana
Paspalum scrobiculatum
Setaria verticillata
Browntop millet
Brachiaria ramosa
Horse gram
Macrotyloma uniorum
Vigna radiata
Black gram
Pigeon Pea
Hyacinth bean
Vigna mungo
Cajanus cajan
Lablab purpureus
Wheats
Barley
Triticum sp.
Horduem vulgare
Indian Jubejube
Zizyphus jubea
Cordia sp.
Phyllanthus sp.
Areca catechu
a
Fuller (1999, 2003; Korisettar et al., 2002) considers all identications of nger millet, save a single specimen from Hallur, to be
misidentications by previous research based on morphological attributes.
Table 3
Percentages of NISP results from South Deccan/North Dharwar Neolithic sites. (Based on data from Allchin, 1961; Monahan, In
press; Nagaraja Rao, 1971; Rami Reddy, 1976; Sastri et al., 1984; Shah, 1973)
Species %
Hallur
Domestic
Cattle
Sheep/goat
Dog
Piga
Bualoa
94.0
3.2
1.6
0.3
0
59.9
6.5
2.6
0
3.2
95.8
2.7
0
0.3
0
74.6
18.3
0.6
0
4.4
94.5
1.0
0.5
0
0
70.29
6.27
1.6
0.8
0
51.06
34.04
0
2.13
0
0.8
0
0
0
21.1
0
2.6
3.9
1.2
0
0
0
0
1.8
0
0
1.6
0
2.1
0
20.9
0
0.8
0
8.52
0
0
04.26
Wild
Antelope/deer
Tortoise
Rodent
Other
Total
a
100
Kodekal
100
Palavoy
100
Piklihal
100
Sangankallu
100
Veerapuram
100
VMS-110
100
Korisettar et al., 2002, p. 190 point to the diculty in determining wild from domestic specimens of bualo (Bubalus bubalus) and
pig (Sus scrofa) found in Neolithic sites.
318
Table 4
Surface area and volume estimates from a selection of ashmounds and other Neolithic features (compiled from data in Allchin, 1963;
Paddayya, 1998, 2001)
Site
Feature
Budihal-S
12.5
250
2000
3000
2449
871
1295
2590
22
N/A
4019
N/A
9797
2323
8635
12,089
Hulikallu
Kodekal
Kudatini
Wandalli
provisioning of pasturage adequate to the needs of community herds without entailing a mobility strategy that
would require long distance ephemeral facilities.
Agricultural practices are another aspect of the Neolithic land-use system for which direct evidence exists in
the form of artifacts (querns, rubber stones) and more
limitedly from macrobotanical remains (Table 2). The
location of Neolithic settlements; ashmound and other,
are generally on or adjacent to large topographical features. These micro-regional landscape elements provide
some of the lowest risk locations for rain-fed agricultural practices. Many of the most frequently documented Neolithic domestic plant species6 were
drought-resistant crops that grow well in the red sandy
loam of the Archaean deposits (Fuller, 2003; Mittre and
Ravi, 1990, p. 102) and are well suited to the monsoon
drainage patterns of the outcrop topography. It is likely
that at least some of the area surrounding ashmound
sites was used for pulse and millet cultivation. As the
dierence in physical characteristics between archaeologically visible Neolithic settlements with and without
ashmounds dier only slightly (some non-ashmound
sites are located in better soil regimes), the selection of
landscape element for ashmound sites by Neolithic
agro-pastoralists appears to be based primarily on the
availability rst, of abundant pasture (Paddayya,
1991) and second, on topographical features conducive
to rain-fed agricultural practices. The interpretation of
these communities as engaged in a mixed agro-pastoral
lifeway in which production units were jointly involved
in pastoral and agricultural activities suggests a lack of
conict regarding land-use between these two subsistence pursuits. This suggests a tempo of Neolithic site
and land-use in which the organization of settlement
and subsistence practices were based on a sedentary or
at least semi-sedentary pattern of site occupation.
7
At present, Korisettar et al.s (2002) argument is based
primarily on eld reconnaissance and paleo-botanical sampling
at a small group of sites and the depth of cultural deposits at
ashmound and non-ashmound Neolithic sites. It should be
noted that little systematic work (i.e., surface collection and
documentation) on determining the expanse of many Neolithic
sites in the region has been undertaken (see Sinopoli and
Morrison, 1992 for a notable exception).
319
320
321
Fig. 4. (A) Kupgal Ashmound (photo courtesy of Carla Sinopoli). (B) Gadiganuru Ashmound (photo by author).
322
Ritual architecture
Given an understanding of the socio-symbolic, communicative structure of monumental architecture and its
potential to convey condensed and complex networks of
social and/or cosmological meaning (Moore, 1996, pp.
9597), what sort of behavioral implications can be associated with the construction of ashmounds by the Neolithic agro-pastoralists of the South Deccan/North
Dharwar region of South India? I argue that ritual
behavior directly correlated with the importance of
cattle pastoralism in the economic lifeway of these communities was responsible for the construction and maintenance of ashmound features.
Ritual is a processual and strategic mode of human
behavior. In a general sense ritual behavior is a means
of engagement with some form of authoritative order
or reality that is seen to both profoundly aect yet transcend present circumstances (Bell, 1997, p. 169). This
engagement is accomplished through deliberate and
meaningful practices and activities sanctioned and naturalized through a degree of social consensus granting
the ritual act special privilege from other more mundane and prosaic activities (Bell, 1997, pp. 166, 167).
High degrees of formalism, performance, adherence to
tradition and rules, and socio-symbolic content are attributes common to much ethnographically and historically observed ritual practice (Bell, 1997, pp. 93169).
323
practices involved with the construction and use of ashmounds and should not be taken to represent universal
criteria for designating a ritual type or form of architecture. Ashmounds as structures are juxtaposed with other
built forms in this archaeological landscape and examined within the communities in which they were an integral part. This demonstrates that ashmounds were
monumental architectural forms designed to mediate social and perhaps cosmological meaning in a ritually
communicative space. As Budihal-S is the only ashmound site which has been subjected to multi-season,
large scale horizontal excavations, much of the focus
of the following discussion is on this site.
Permanence and scale
Moore (1996, p. 139) considers the variable of permanence as an archaeological measure of the expected temporal length of a ritual structures intended use-life by its
324
Fig. 7. Southern side of the Gadiganuru Ashmound illustrating destructive impact to the site from sediment mining (photo by author).
325
of human habitation also suggests the systematic practice of ritual activity that was public, repetitive, and
ceremonial.
Centrality and ubiquity
Revisiting dozens of previously recorded sites, Paddayya (1991) established that ashmounds are almost always at the center of intensive scatters of Neolithic and
in some cases post-Neolithic occupational debris (cf.,
Korisettar et al., 2002). His horizontal excavation at
Budihal-S documented the centrality of these features
in relation to the surrounding settlement area. Budihal-S is a large Neolithic site consisting of four localities of intensive occupational debris spread out over
an area approximately 12 ha (Paddayya, 1998). At the
center of at least two of these localities are ashmounds
(a third locality has a large central deposit of ash that
has been largely destroyed, a fourth locality appears less
certain). Excavations in three of the localities exposed
stratied Neolithic occupational remains adjacent to
the ashmounds and ash deposits. At locality I, the remains of 10 circular houses were excavated in the area
directly south of the ashmound and on either side of
the large animal butchering oor (Paddayya et al.,
1995, p. 25). Limited excavations at Hulikallu (Krishna
Sastry, 1979, p. 49) also exposed the remains of a sizable
habitation area proximal to the ashmounds including at
least one circular house oor. At many other ashmound
sites surface remains of occupational debris are scattered
over adjacent areas (e.g., Gadiganuru, Kurekuppa;
see Allchin, 1963 and Paddayya, 1991 for lists of sites).
The central position of ashmounds within many Neolithic settlements is a further indication of their importance in the social regimes of these communities. There
are also cases where ashmounds or large deposits of ashmound materials are found on landforms adjacent to
settlement sites such as at Sanganakallu (Korisettar et
al., 2002) and VMS-110.
While many ashmound settlements contain only a
single mound, at several sites there are as many as four
(Table 1). Whether these mounds were constructed and
used simultaneously is uncertain, but if they were this
may indicate that the ritual activity associated with their
maintenance was oriented towards specic community
groups such kin-group aliations; however, this remains
speculative. The absence of ashmounds at many
Neolithic sitese.g., Hallur, Maski, Tekkalakota, Veerapuram, Watgalmay indicate that ritual activity associated with cattle production was restricted to particular
communities or that ashmounds at theses sites have subsequently been destroyed. It should be noted that during
the excavation of Neolithic Watgal a rammed earth feature surrounded (but not mounded) by a large and dense
concentration ash lensing was exposed (Devaraj et al.,
1995).
326
Visibility
The consideration of the visual accessibility of ritual
performance at ashmound features contributes to a better understanding of the public nature of ceremonial life
at these places (see Fogelin, 200311). The scale of ashmounds and their central location proximal to otherwise
vertically undierentiated settlements suggests an equality of visual access to ceremonial activity within the ashmound precinct. At least one activity, the burning of the
mound, would have been visible to all in the community.
However, there is the possibility that ceremonial activity
within the enclosed lower mound sections, such as postulated earlier for the circular sandstone platform at
Budihal-S, may have been visually obscured to those
on the exterior of the enclosure by perishable materials
used in wall construction. Lines of post-holes around
the perimeter of the lower mound at Utnur suggest
the presence of such a vision restricting wall (Allchin,
1961, pp. 6668)). Large patches of burned surfaces at
Budihal-S in isolated areas (such as that surrounding
the platform) indicate that pyrotechnic activity was
not restricted to the upper ashmound. However, the
large surface area within the enclosure could have held
hundreds of people at a time. And while it may be concluded that the enclosure walls functioned to keep cattle
in, it cannot be determined that they also functioned to
restrict access to ceremonial activities within its connes.
Ritual forms of communication that are public, formalized, and repetitive require the structured organization of space. The structured remains of ashmounds,
which are monumental, permanent, highly visible, and
central to areas populated during the South Indian Neolithic suggest that these structural spaces were the location of public, formalized, and repetitive communal
ritual. Ashmounds were monumental forms of architecture built in part through ritual processes intended to
transmit socio-symbolically charged information likely
concerning group integration and social reproduction.
remains) at or around many of these sites suggest a continuity of occupation or at least re-occupation and reuse
of these places for monumental building activities (Allchin, 1963; Rami Reddy, 1976; Sundara, 1971). During
the course of the Vijayanagara Metropolitan Survey
every ashmound or ashmound-like deposit observed
was directly proximal to either surface scatters of IronAge and Early Historic cultural material or standing
megaliths (Morrison, n.d.). Surface collections from
one such site, VMS-634 has yielded a ceramic assemblage dominated by Iron Age/Early Historic types
(Johansen, 2003).
Perhaps the most interesting continuity of ritual
practice is the erection of a massive megalithic monument on top of and around an ashmound in the Shorapur doab just north of the town of Shahpur (Fig. 1).
Meadows Taylor (1853, pp. 393-396; 1862) reported that
the 20 m diameter mound at this site was encircled by
eight perimeters of large standing stones (some as tall
as 3 m) and that the mound itself was faced with at
stones and capped with a layer of soil with a circle of
standing stones on its summit (Fig. 10). Ashmound
deposits (up to 3 m thick) were discovered when he excavated the mound looking for tomb cysts. Meadows Taylor (1853, 1862, p. 396) believed, according to one of the
327
Fig. 10. Plan and Section of the Shapur Ashmound-Megalith (after Meadows Taylor, 1862).
328
Conclusion
Neolithic ashmounds were embedded in an agro-pastoral landscape in which small village communities
emphasized the production of pastoral products. Sites
and settlements marked by ashmounds were located in
similar landscape elements ecologically favorable to pastoralism and small-scale agriculture. Ashmounds were
constructed incrementally, synchronized with the social
and ritual rhythm of cattle keeping. Within years or generations many of these mounds had acquired the dimensional attributes of monumental form.
The recognition of ashmounds as monumental architecture entails an understanding of the socio-symbolic
potential of built form. Based upon a number of visual
dimensions of perception, this examination of ashmounds demonstrates their monumentality and the communicative structure of their form as a unique class of
features. The proportions of many ashmounds ensured
that these were the most prominent structures on the
Neolithic landscape. Within settlements or more ephemeral encampments, ashmounds were visually unavoidable and served to constantly reinforce complex
networks of socio-symbolic meaning. While no attempt
to understand the specicities of this possible range of
meanings is made, certain behavioral implications involved in ashmound construction inferred from the
archaeological record suggest an origin in ritual action.
A close examination of ashmound deposits illustrates
the cyclical and repetitive rhythm of activities involved
in their construction. In the upper sections of excavated
ashmounds this included the collection of cow dung, its
deposition in a central location within agro-pastoral
Acknowledgments
This work was originally a Masters thesis completed
by the author in the spring of 2000 for the University of
Chicagos Department of Anthropology. The argument
presented here is built on archaeological data carefully
collected by many researchers but especially by F.R. Allchin and K. Paddayya. A great debt is owed to them for
their exhaustive and challenging research. Discussions
with Professor K. Paddayya while he was a visiting Fulbright scholar at the University of Michigan in 1999
were also an invaluable resource in formulating and
researching this paper. Comments from Andrew Bauer,
Radhika Bauer, Kathleen Morrison (thesis supervisor),
Sandra Morrison, Carla Sinopoli, and Adam T. Smith
were very helpful and greatly appreciated. I thank John
OShea and an anonymous reviewer for their very valuable comments during the review process. All responsibility for errors and opinions are my own.
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