Sanganakallu () is an ancient archaeological site from the Neolithic period (circa 3000 BC). It is approximately 8 km from

Bellary Bellary, officially Ballari, in the eponymous Bellary district, is a city in the state of Karnataka, India. History Bellary was a part of Rayalaseema (Ceded Districts) which was part of Madras Presidency till 1 November 1956. The Ballari ...

in eastern

Karnataka Karnataka (; ISO 15919, ISO: , , also known as Karunāḍu) is a States and union territories of India, state in the southwestern region of India. It was Unification of Karnataka, formed on 1 November 1956, with the passage of the States Reor ...

. It is a group of hills south of a horseshoe shaped valley, with Kupgal to the north. It is one of the earliest settlements in

South India South India, also known as Dakshina Bharata or Peninsular India, consists of the peninsular southern part of India. It encompasses the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Telangana, as well as the union terr ...

, spread over 1,000 acres. There is a layer of red-brown

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...

ized soil spread over Sanganakallu and Kupgal that can be dated back to 9000 BC. The site is considered to be a

neolithic The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several pa ...

factory site due to the surface excavation revealing large numbers of pottery, stone axes, and other

stone tool A stone tool is, in the most general sense, any tool made either partially or entirely out of stone. Although stone tool-dependent societies and cultures still exist today, most stone tools are associated with prehistoric (particularly Stone A ...

s. The site was first majorly excavated in 1946, by Bendapudi Subbarao, on Sannarasamma hill. Subbarao divided their culture into 3 phases: * Pre-

Mesolithic The Mesolithic ( Greek: μέσος, ''mesos'' 'middle' + λίθος, ''lithos'' 'stone') or Middle Stone Age is the Old World archaeological period between the Upper Paleolithic and the Neolithic. The term Epipaleolithic is often used synonymo ...

, the phase when Sanganakallu was first settled, had little pottery, and the people made crude

microlith A microlith is a small stone tool usually made of flint or chert and typically a centimetre or so in length and half a centimetre wide. They were made by humans from around 35,000 to 3,000 years ago, across Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia. Th ...

s. *

, the phase when pottery was handmade and stone axes were mass produced. *

Neolithic The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several pa ...

, the phase when pottery and tools became more sophisticated. Sanganakallu was excavated again in 1964.

Tools

The earliest tools excavated were hundreds of patinated flakes made of

basalt Basalt (; ) is an aphanitic (fine-grained) extrusive igneous rock formed from the rapid cooling of low-viscosity lava rich in magnesium and iron (mafic lava) exposed at or very near the surface of a rocky planet or moon. More than 90 ...

, and

quartz Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica ( silicon dioxide). The atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon-oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall chemical f ...

flakes. In the later Mesolithic phase is when tool making became more abundant. Stone axes, hammer stones,

chisel A chisel is a tool with a characteristically shaped cutting edge (such that wood chisels have lent part of their name to a particular grind) of blade on its end, for carving or cutting a hard material such as wood, stone, or metal by hand, s ...

s, picks, slick-stones, and sling stones were excavated. The axes were found in many different shapes. There were oval shaped, triangular shaped, or rectangular shaped axes and some were axes were rounded and some were thin. The sheer number of

s is the reason Sanganakallu is considered a factory site.

Pottery

The first pottery started showing up in Mesolithic phase. The pottery was usually dull brown or black, and hand-made out of coarse clay. Pale-gray pots made of fine clay mixed with lime and

mica Micas ( ) are a group of silicate minerals whose outstanding physical characteristic is that individual mica crystals can easily be split into extremely thin elastic plates. This characteristic is described as perfect basal cleavage. Mica is ...

were also excavated. The pottery from the later

period were more fine, thin, and polished. They were all burnt and wheel turned. The ornamental pottery was decorated in a finger groove pattern and a few shards were found painted purple. A few pots were perforated and the significance of that is not yet known.

1964 excavation

In this excavation, a one room Neolithic circular house was excavated. The wall was made with bamboo and clay and the floor was covered in potholes. There was a hearth in the center of the house, and there is evidence of it being burned. Other than the house structure, a few

terracotta Terracotta, terra cotta, or terra-cotta (; ; ), in its material sense as an earthenware substrate, is a clay-based unglazed or glazed ceramic where the fired body is porous. In applied art, craft, construction, and architecture, terra ...

figurines in the shape of birds or bulls were also found as well as more

s and pottery. Animal remains were also collected, the majority of which were cow bones.

Earliest agriculturists

The people who settled at Sanganakallu were early agriculturists, who cultivated small

millet Millets () are a highly varied group of small-seeded grasses, widely grown around the world as cereal crops or grains for fodder and human food. Most species generally referred to as millets belong to the tribe Paniceae, but some millets a ...

s and

pulses In medicine, a pulse represents the tactile arterial palpation of the cardiac cycle (heartbeat) by trained fingertips. The pulse may be palpated in any place that allows an artery to be compressed near the surface of the body, such as at the nec ...

. They kept sheep, cattle, and had separate areas for dumping dung ( ash mounds). It is hypothesized these ash mounds were for burning cow dung possibly in a ritual manner.

References