Kaytha or Kayatha is a village and an archaeological site in the Ujjain district of

Madhya Pradesh Madhya Pradesh (; ; ) is a state in central India. Its capital is Bhopal and the largest city is Indore, Indore. Other major cities includes Gwalior, Jabalpur, and Sagar, Madhya Pradesh, Sagar. Madhya Pradesh is the List of states and union te ...

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

, in the

Tarana ''Tarana'' is a type of composition in Hindustani classical music, Hindustani classical vocal music in which certain words (e.g. "odani", "todani", "tadeem" and "yalali") based on Persian language, Persian and Arabic language, Arabic phonemes are ...

tehsil A tehsil (, also known as tahsil, taluk, or taluka () is a local unit of administrative division in India and Pakistan. It is a subdistrict of the area within a Zila (country subdivision), district including the designated populated place that ser ...

, near the city of Ujjain, on the banks of Choti-Kali Sindh river. In 1964,

V. S. Wakankar Vishnu Shridhar Wakankar (4 May 1919 – 3 April 1988) was an Indian archaeologist. Wakankar is credited with the discovery of the Bhimbetka rock caves in 1957 and the Kayatha culture in 1964, among others. In 2003, UNESCO inscribed the Bhimbetk ...

discovered the archeologically important Kayatha culture here, dating back to more than 4000 years.

Archaeology

Several

Chalcolithic The Chalcolithic ( ) (also called the Copper Age and Eneolithic) was an archaeological period characterized by the increasing use of smelted copper. It followed the Neolithic and preceded the Bronze Age. It occurred at different periods in di ...

sites, with four occupational phases, have been discovered in the

Malwa Malwa () is a historical region, historical list of regions in India, region of west-central India occupying a plateau of volcanic origin. Geologically, the Malwa Plateau generally refers to the volcanic plateau, volcanic upland north of the ...

region of central India. The site at Kayatha, situated on the right bank of the Choti Kali Sindh river (a tributary of Chambal river), is the

type site In archaeology, a type site (American English) or type-site (British English) is the site used to define a particular archaeological culture or other typological unit, which is often named after it. For example, discoveries at La Tène and H ...

of this culture, known as "Kayatha culture". Excavations conducted by

(1965–66), and by M. K. Dhavalikar and Z. D. Ansari (1968) revealed layers from five different periods: # Period I: Kayatha culture # Period II: Ahar culture # Period III: Malwa culture # Period IV: Early historical culture # Period V: Sunga-Kushan-Gupta culture Of these, period I to III are

. There are four C-14 dated from period I and three from period III giving a range from 2000 BC to 1200 BC to the Chalcolithic culture at Kayatha. The Kayatha culture represents the earliest known agriculture settlement in the present-day Malwa region. It also featured advanced copper metallurgy and stone blade industry. Using

calibrated In measurement technology and metrology, calibration is the comparison of measurement values delivered by a device under test with those of a calibration standard of known accuracy. Such a standard could be another measurement device of known ...

radiocarbon, Dhavalikar dated this culture to a period spanning from 2400 BCE to 2000 BCE. However, calibrated dates by

Gregory Possehl Gregory Louis Possehl (July 21, 1941 – October 8, 2011) was a professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, United States, and curator of the Asian Collections at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology an ...

place it between 2200 BCE and 2000 BCE. Excavation at Kayatha in 1964-65, revealed the Kayatha culture dates much earlier than the Malwa culture. An interesting aspect is that the earliest occupants used triangular terracota cake-like objects, stone weights, buff ware etc. Depictions of bull, deer, panther and elephants have been discovered later. Interestingly, a clay figure of horse has also been discovered. Also of archeological and anthropological significance is the parallel between the bull forms from Kayatha and south European sites. Though not much is known about the religious practices of the Kayatha culture but it is suggested that they must have been in contact with OCP people in North and the Harappans.

Demographics

According to the 2011

census of India The decennial census of India has been conducted 15 times, as of 2011. While it has been undertaken every 10 years, beginning in 1872 under Viceroy Lord Mayo, the first complete census was taken in 1872. Post 1949, it has been conducted by the R ...

, Kaytha has a population of 8040, including 4143 males and 3897 females. The sex ratio of the village is 955. The effective literacy rate (excluding children below 6) is 70.5%.

References

{{reflist Villages of Ujjain district Archaeological sites in Madhya Pradesh History of Malwa