Haricharan - 2013 - Situating Megalithic Burials in The Iron

Situating megalithic burials in the Iron
Age-Early Historic landscape of

southern India
Smriti Haricharan
1
, Hema Achyuthan
2
& N. Suresh
3
0 km 1000
N
New Delhi
Siruthavoor
The megalithic burials of southern India
a wonderfully varied set of monuments
have long needed a chronology and a context.
Broadly contemporary with the Roman and
Sasanian empires, these dolmens, cairns and
cists have continually raised contradictions
with their material contents. The authors
attack the problemusing luminescence applied
to pottery at the site of Siruthavoor in north-
east Tamilnadu. Although sharing material
culture, this rst pilot project gave dates
ranging from 300 BC to AD 600, so exposing
the problem and perhaps, in OSL, its long-
term solution.
Keywords: southern India, Tamilnadu, Siruthavoor, Iron Age-Early Historic, rst millennium
BC, rst millennium AD, dolmens, stone circles, cairns, cists, urn burial, OSL
Introduction
A thousand megalithic cists might be excavated with the utmost care [in south India]
without any signicant addition to our knowledge of their chronology (Wheeler 1947:
185). The chronology of the Iron Age-Early Historic megalithic burials continues to be
a problem, 65 years after Wheelers statement. The burials are spread over a large area,
including the Vindhya range, Deccan plateau and peninsular India, with some outliers in
Jammu and Kashmir and the north-eastern parts of India (Banerjee 1956; Gururaja Rao
1972; Leshnik 1974; Sundara 1979; Brubaker 2001). Their grave goods indicate contacts
1
National Institute of Advanced Studies, Indian Institute of Science campus, Bangalore 550 012, India
(Author for correspondence, email: smriti.haricharan@gmail.com)
2
Department of Geology, Anna University, Sardar Patel Road, Guindy, Chennai 600 025, India
(Email: hachyuthan@gmail.com)
3
Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology, 33 General Mahadeo Singh Road, Dehra Dun 248 001, India
(Email: suresh n@wihg.res.in)
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Antiquity Publications Ltd.
ANTIQUITY 87 (2013): 488502 http://antiquity.ac.uk/ant/087/ant0870488.htm
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Smriti Haricharan, Hema Achyuthan & N. Suresh
with not only other cultures in India, but also with Rome, Mesopotamia and Sri Lanka
(Tomber 2007; Rajan 2008). Understanding the burial rites and their chronology is necessary
to elucidate the socio-cultural, religious and even economic aspects of this period in southern
India, which in turn add to our knowledge of the relationships between the various cultures
at this time.
The burials have been classied in a variety of forms: cairn circle, dolmen, cist burial, urn
burials, sarcophagi and combinations of these (Krishnaswami 1949; Gururaja Rao 1972;
Leshnik 1972; Rajan 2000). Mohanty & Selvakumar (2002) observed several sites that
have more than one form of monument, with a number of variations in their external and
internal architecture. Moorti (1994) states that even broadly classied types, for example
stone circles or cairn circles, vary considerably in their shape, size and nature of deposit and
are rarely similar in all aspects. The use of megalithic as an umbrella term encompassing
such varied burial practices over a long time span is based on the fact that most of the
burials are associated with some kind of stone setting. They have also been thought to share
particular grave goods: iron artefacts and Black and Red Ware (BRW) pottery. However,
this assumption seems to compound the problem further, rather than being explicatory, and
here we prefer to use the term Iron Age-Early Historic burials instead of megalithic burials
(except in Table 2 where the term megalithic has been retained, as excavation reports of
habitation sites refer to a megalithic phase, making the period they refer to ambiguous).
In some parts of peninsular India, like northern Karnataka, the dates of the burials have
been pushed back to the beginning of the rst millennium BC. Thomas et al. (2008)
have recently used both thermo-luminescence (TL) and optically stimulated luminescence
(OSL) methods to date pottery samples from a site within the University of Hyderabad,
Andhra Pradesh, obtaining dates of 2145 BCand 2795 BC(TL) and 1995 BCand 2505 BC
(SAR-OSL) respectively. These align well with radiocarbon dates fromBrahmagiri, northern
Karnataka, with an overall range between 2140 and 1940 BC (Morrison 2005). However,
these are exceptional; few scientic dates are available, a problem aggravated by few burials
having any surviving organic matter (Moorti 1994; Brubaker 2001; Morrison 2005).
In Tamilnadu (Figure 1), the megalithic burials are believed to date from 800900 BC
to AD 400500 (Gururaja Rao 1972; Leshnik 1972; Allchin 1974; Rajan 2000; Mohanty
&Selvakumar 2002). The later part of this Iron Age-Early Historic period famously features
material from Rome and other neighbouring lands, which has been used to help with the
chronology. Wheeler (1947) based his dates for the burials on the occurrence of Roman and
Satavahana coins at a habitation site at Chandravalli. Leshnik (1974) used material from
Taxila to date material from the Iron Age-Early Historic burials of southern India. Tomber
(2007) drew attention to the fact that much of the Roman pottery found in southern India
that had previously been consigned to the late rst century BC to second or third centuries
AD can now be extended to the sixth or even early seventh centuries AD.
Radiometric dates obtained from excavated burial sites in Tamilnadu, such as Paiyampalli
(North Arcot district) and Kodumanal are 640
+
105 BC (Possehl 1994) and AD 1550

+
90
(Joshi 1993b) respectively. These dates reiterate the broad spread of the burial practices
and the need to reassess and ne-tune their chronology. While this paper does not provide
answers to all the problems of chronology for the Iron Age-Early Historic burials in southern
India, it aims to substantiate the argument for a need to re-examine the way we approach this
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Situating megalithic burials in the Iron Age-Early Historic landscape of southern India
Figure 1. Iron Age-Early Historic burial and Early Historic habitation sites.
problem. The chosen case study is the burial ground at Siruthavoor in north-east Tamilnadu,
and the chosen method is OSL dating, used on ceramics.
Siruthavoor: a case study
Siruthavoor lies in Kanchipuram district, situated along the northern coast of Tamilnadu,
India and is adjacent to the Bay of Bengal (Figure 1). The area in which the Iron Age-Early
Historic burials are located is bounded by the Siruthavoor lake (tank) towards the south and
a hillock of around 31m asl towards the north, with a smaller hillock (below 15m asl) to the
east (Figure 2). The geology of the area is represented by Archaean to Precambrian crystalline
formations such as charnockite, granite gneiss and ultrabasic rocks, overlain by Mesozoic
and Tertiary sedimentary rocks (Rajmohan & Elango 2005). Most of the megalithic burials
at the site are built using charnockite, granite gneiss and lateritic rocks.
Exploration, mapping and excavation were conducted at the site from 20072009.
Although innumerable burials have been destroyed at this site by sand quarrying, over
500 burials remained during the survey. Of these, 166 were of the cairn circle type, 141
were dolmens, 157 were dolmens within a stone circle, 38 were cists and 57 were of cist-with-
circle type. The urn burials were harder to map since most of them have no stone appendage
visible on the surface. Eight burials were excavated. Burial 1 was a cairn circle type; burial
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Figure 2. Siruthavoor in 2008 excavated in collaboration with ASI (Chennai Circle) and the Department of Geology, Anna
University, Chennai.
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Figure 3. Burial 3 cist with two boulders, which are part of the cairn circle, seen from the western side.
Figure 4. Burial 4 dolmen, before excavation near the outcrop.
2 a sarcophagus; burial 3 a cist within a stone circle (Figure 3); burial 4 a dolmen without
a circle (Figure 4); burial 5 a dolmen within a circle, with pottery sarcophagi (Figure 5);
burial 6 a dolmen without a circle; and burials 7 and 8 (Figure 6) were urn burials. Burials
1, 4, 5 and 6 were intact, while burials 2, 3, 7 and 8 were partially disturbed or exposed.
Burials 2, 7 and 8 did not have any associated lithic appendage visible on the surface.
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Figure 5. Burial 5, showing all three sarcophagi within the dolmen; cairn stones are visible in the background.
The pottery from Siruthavoor was, on the whole, badly preserved, making analysis of its
form and fabric difcult (Figure 7). Most of the anthropogenic disturbance of the burials at
Siruthavoor was in the area around burials 2 and 3. A large percentage of what remains of
the burials in this area indicates that they were cist burials. The surface material collected
is similar to the material excavated in burial 3 including iron objects, carnelian beads and
pottery (Figure 8). Between burials 2 and 3 and burials 4, 5 and 6, large boulders are
indicative of possible dolmen type burials, but the surface nds here are very sparse. This
gives tantalising possibilities of spatio-temporal correlations. However, the need for ner
chronological resolution becomes even greater when one considers an evolutionary approach
to the study of the archaeological record (Lipo et al. 2005).
Surface nds such as microlithic tools, excavation of the Iron Age-Early Historic burials
at the site and a Siva temple (dated to the ninth century AD from epigraphical evidence) at
Siruthavoor indicate that the site has been occupied for a long period of time and through
different cultural phases. No evidence of a habitation site has been found at Siruthavoor
so far. During construction work near the Siva temple, villagers reported nding metal
artefacts and pottery which match the description of Black Ware. However, this has not
been corroborated. The undiagnostic pottery and the lack of associated organic material at
Siruthavoor led to the choice of OSL as a dating method.
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Figure 6. Burial 8 from Siruthavoor.
Figure 7. Pottery from burials 3, 4, 5 and 7 (all scales are 5cm).
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Figure 8. Carnelian beads and iron objects from burials 2 and 3.
OSL dating
There has been a signicant improvement in the OSL dating technique in recent years,
particularly using the single aliquot regeneration (SAR) protocol, leading to an expected
accuracy of around 510 per cent (Bluszcz 2004). Of the eight excavated burials at
Siruthavoor, ve were dated using OSL (Table 1). All the samples were obtained from
sarcophagi or urns containing burial remains, as these are one of the more permanent features
present in each burial. Altogether, six samples of pottery, two from burial 5 (sarcophagi 5a
and 5c), and one from each of burials 3, 4, 6 and 8 were dated.
OSL dating was carried out at the luminescence dating laboratory at Wadia Institute of
Himalayan Geology, Dehra Dun, India. Samples of pottery sarcophagi or urns were crushed
under subdued red light conditions. The luminescence was stimulated by exposure to blue
light in a Riso TL-DA20 reader and measured as De (equivalent dose), the radiation trapped
since the pottery was red. To get an assessment of time in calendar years, the De is divided
by annual dose rates deduced from the amounts of potassium, uranium and thorium in the
pot fabric, measured by XRF. Soil originally in contact with the pottery was not available.
The sequence at Siruthavoor
The OSL dates suggest that the site was in use from at least 300
+
51 BC until AD 619
+
28
(Table 1). The dolmen burial, burial 4 (381179 BC) was the earliest (Figure 4). It was
situated next to the smaller hillock at Siruthavoor and is north of the Siruthavoor lake. The
grave goods included a few fragmentary pottery pieces, located at a depth of 100300mm.
The sediments were reddish orange (10 R 6/8) in colour and sandy silt in texture. Burial 5
was a dolmen type of burial but with a stone circle around it (Figure 5). Three sarcophagi had
been placed within the dolmen, named for convenience as a, b and c. The samples from the
sarcophagi dated to 103 BCAD 113 (c) and 42 BCAD 374 (a). The associated material
was limited to a gold ring, some very fragmentary pieces of pottery and a three-legged jar.
McIntosh (1985) locates the occurrence of three-legged jars in Karnataka and adjacent areas
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Table 1. OSL dates of the six excavated burials at Siruthavoor.
Moisture No. of
content Equivalent dose Dose rate aliquots
Lab no. Burial type U (ppm) Th (ppm) K (%) (%) (De) Gy (Gy/ka) Date Age (years) analysed
LD650 Dolmen without
circle (burial
4)
2
+
0.02 13.2
+
0.13 1.30
+
0.01 2 6.58
+
0.10 2.81
+
0.05 330
+
51 BC 2340
+
51 27
LD651 Dolmen with
circle (burial
5c)
1.8
+
0.02 17.8
+
0.18 1.85
+
0.02 2 7.32
+
0.38 3.63
+
0.05 5
+
108 BC 2015
+
108 14
LD652 Dolmen with
circle (burial
5a)
0.4
+
0.004 34.1
+
0.34 1.75
+
0.02 2 8.07
+
0.90 4.38
+
0.07 AD 166
+
208 1844
+
208 16
LD653 Cist without
circle (burial
6)
0.8
+
0.01 29.2
+
0.29 1.39
+
0.01 2 6.27
+
0.14 3.77
+
0.06 AD 346
+
45 1664
+
45 18
LD654 Urn (burial 8) 2.1
+
0.02 18.1
+
0.18 1.20
+
0.01 2 4.70
+
0.22 3.09
+
0.05 AD 487
+
74 1523
+
74 29
LD655 Cist with circle
(burial 3)
1.4
+
0.01 40.3
+
0.4 1.28
+
0.01 2 6.38
+
0.08 4.59
+
0.08 AD 619
+
28 1391
+
28 31
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in Tamilnadu, dating them to between 500 and 300 BC. The two samples dated from
burial 5 are approximately 100 years apart, pointing towards the possible reuse of a single
grave.
Burial 8 (AD 413561) was an urn burial at the southern end of the promontory. The
most recent date was obtained from a cist within a circle, burial 3 (AD 591647), which
also contained the widest variety and largest quantity of pottery. This burial also contained
three pot sherds with identical grafti (Haricharan & Achyuthan 2012). The sediments in
the burial were uniformly red (10 R 5/8) in colour and compact and sandy silt in texture,
with very little or no variation. The burial was partially disturbed but the cist was completely
intact with most cairn circle stones in situ on the eastern half (Figure 3). The base of the
sarcophagus within the cist was excavated at a depth of 0.66mfromthe surface and was used
for dating this burial. The bulk of the associated pottery was excavated at a depth of 0.63
0.67m inside and around the cist. The pots were of varied shapes and, while occasionally
Black and Red Ware (BRW) bowls and Black Ware (BW) and Red Ware (RW) stands were
noticed, the majority were RW pots with a narrow mouth and rounded base (Figure 7).
The iron implements from this burial were varied in size and shape, and etched carnelian
beads were also recovered from this burial (Figure 8). It was observed that the dolmen and
cist burials without circles (burials 4 and 6), are of an earlier date than those with a circle
(burials 3, 5a and 5c).
Dates from neighbouring sites
Although the Early Historic period in Tamilnadu is accepted to run from 300 BCAD
300, there are problems with this assigned time span (Table 2). Rajan (2008) dates grafti
marks on pottery and carnelian beads to the Early Historic period based on evidence from
excavated material from Kodumanal. At Tangal, located close to Chennai, a habitation site
with carnelian beads, iron objects and BRW, RWand BWpottery was relatively dated, using
coins, to AD 800 (Cammiade 1930; Leshnik 1974). The cist burial dated at Kodumanal
had similar associated evidence of pot sherds with grafti, iron implements and carnelian
beads but is dated to the sixteenth century (Ghosh 1989; Rajan 2008). Adichannallur,
Veerapatti, Madurai district, and Paiyampalli are habitation sites as well as Iron Age-Early
Historic burial sites. A preceding Neolithic period was excavated at Paiyampalli (Ghosh
1969, 1973, 1989; Lal 1971, 1973), but some of the
14
C dates for Neolithic and Iron Age-
Early Historic phases from Paiyampalli were AD 935
+
110 and AD 1140

+
195 respectively,
and have been discarded as doubtful (Lal 1971). Similarly, dates from Adichannallur and
Veerapatti, Madurai district, have been discarded as they did not correlate with associated
material evidence (Agrawal et al. 1964; Dorje & Banerji 2000). While this poses a problem
for accepting the scientic dates as absolute, there is a need to evaluate the relative dating
methods as well.
At habitation sites such as Adiyamankottai, Tamilnadu, it is noticeable that excavation
reports suggest three phases of occupation with changing pottery types and chronology,
from a majority of BRW and BW pottery in the rst phase to a shift towards RW and coarse
RW in the second phase (Mitra 1983b, 1984). Shanmugam (2000) states that excavations
from various habitation, burial and port sites in Tamilnadu specify that BRW is generally
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Table 2. Dates from previously excavated Iron Age-Early Historic sites in Tamilnadu.
Site Date Site assignation Pottery References
Alagankulam,
Ramnad district
380
+
105 BC Habitation site BRW, amphorae Joshi 1993a; Possehl

1994; Menon 2002
355
+
135 BC Rouletted Ware, Grey

Ware
Possehl 1994
255
+
105 BC Possehl 1994

205
+
105 BC Possehl 1994

Adichannallur,
Tirunelveli
district
AD 1150
+
100 Megalithic, urn

burial
BRW, RW and BW Ghosh 1989; Possehl
1994
Adiyamankottai,
Dharmapuri
district
AD 180
+
125 Habitation sites

with 3 phases
BRW, BW and bright
slipped Russet-
Coated Ware
Mitra 1983b; Mitra
1984; Tripathi 1987;
Possehl 1994
Apukullu, North
Arcot district
350
+
145 BC Megalithic
burial and
habitation site
BRW, lustrous
polished BW
(Phase I)
Red-slipped Ware
and two of the
Rouletted Ware,
(Phase II, Phase
III)
Thapar 1980; Mitra
1983a; Possehl 1994
Killiyur,
Thanjavur
district
315
+
105 BC Early Historic

port
BRW Ghosh 1973; Ghosh
1989; Possehl 1994
Kanchipuram,
Chengleput
district
AD 1070
+
120 Habitation site BRW, Russet-Coated

painted ware and
BW
Lal 1971; Deshpande
1974; Deshpande
1975; Thapar 1979;
Tripathi 1987;
Possehl 1994
480
+
125 BC Possehl 1994

200
+
95 BC Possehl 1994
Kodumanal,
Periyar district
AD 1550
+
90 Megalithic, cist
with circle
burial
BRW, Russet-Coated
painted ware and
BW
Ghosh 1989; Joshi
1993b; Menon 2002
Korkai, Tirunelveli
district
810
+
95 BC Early Historic
port and
megalithic
urn burial
(dated)
BRW, sherds of
black-slipped, plain
red, and
red-slipped wares
and Rouletted
Ware
Ghosh 1989; Possehl
1994
Vallam, Thanjavur 1035
+
105 BC Megalithic BRW Lal 1971; Possehl 1994

975
+
145 BC Possehl 1994

480
+
125 BC Possehl 1994

AD 610
+
105 Possehl 1994

Paiyampalli, North
Arcot district
AD 935
+
110 Late Neolithic BRW Ghosh 1969; Lal 1971;

Ghosh 1973; Ghosh
1989; Possehl 1994
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Table 2. Continued.
Site Date Site assignation Pottery References
AD 1140
+
195 Megalithic? Possehl 1994

AD 1155
+
105 Late Neolithic Possehl 1994

AD 1235
+
100 Megalithic? Possehl 1994

1725
+
110 BC Neolithic-
Megalithic
transition
Possehl 1994
1490
+
105 BC Neolithic-
Megalithic
transition
Possehl 1994
1360
+
215 BC Late Neolithic Possehl 1994

640
+
105 BC Megalithic Possehl 1994

215
+
100 BC Megalithic Possehl 1994

AD 790
+
105 Late Neolithic Possehl 1994

the earliest type of pottery and is followed by RW and coarse RW, which are of a later
period. At Siruthavoor, excavation revealed that the quantity and variety of pottery had
more correlation with the age of the burial than the type of pottery.
Table 2 also shows the prolonged use of BRW pottery, which was assumed to have
been conned to the rst few centuries AD and a little earlier (Shanmugam 2000). As
Morrison (2005: 260) states BRW, as is well known, is a very widespread, long-lived, rather
notorious ceramic that, notwithstanding its normative association with megaliths, is also
known to co-occur with Russet-Coated Painted Ware in Early Historic contexts and even
with Neolithic ceramics. All the sites mentioned in Table 2 have BRW pottery, but each
site has combinations of other pottery associated with it, ranging from BW to Rouletted
Ware, and the dates differ from the eighth century BC (Korkai) to the sixth century AD
(Vallam), implying that BRW was in use for nearly 1400 years (Ghosh 1969; Lal 1971,
1973).
Alagankulam, Adiyamankottai and Kanchipuram in Tamilnadu are Early Historic
habitation sites. All of the samples dated from Alagankulam were from different layers of the
same trench (AGM-2) and assigned to different phases (Menon 2002), and their dates range
from 380
+
105 to 205
+
105 BC (Possehl 1994) (Table 2). The excavated materials from

phases I and II differ little in terms of pottery and associated artefacts. Phase II is characterised
by the introduction of Roman artefacts, including amphorae and coins (Menon 2002), but
the amphorae have later been identied as torpedo jar sherds from Mesopotamia by Tomber
(2007). The excavators have dated Phase I, using pottery, to between the fth and rst
centuries BC, and Phase II, using the Roman coins, from the rst to the fth centuries AD
(Menon 2002). At Kanchipuram, charcoal found just above the natural soil was dated and
designated as Phase I (divided into two sub-phases), having amphorae, and relatively dated
by the excavators to c. 300 BCAD 500 (Deshpande 1975; Thapar 1979; Ghosh 1989).
One of the samples from this site, dated to AD 1070
+
120, was excavated in association

with BRW (Tripathi 1987).
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Korkai and Killiyur (Table 2) are both Early Historic port sites, dated to 810
+
95 BC and
315
+
105 BC respectively by
14
C of wood (Possehl 1994). The samples dated at Korkai,
however, were from an Iron Age-Early Historic urn burial (KRK1); interestingly, a coin
from the period of Rajaraja Chola I was also recovered (Lal 1971, 1973). Kaveripattinam,
Karaikadu, Vasavasamudram and Arikamedu are also probable port sites (Begley 1986).
These sites can be roughly dated to the same time period as the earlier Iron Age-Early
Historic burials at Siruthavoor. These examples highlight the point that relative dating
alone based on associated material could be misleading.
Discussion
The origin and distribution of Iron Age-Early Historic burials have often been debated,
generating various theories of inuence from external sources (Smith 1915; Childe 1946;
Gururaja Rao 1972; Leshnik 1974; Narasimhaiah 1980; Allchin & Allchin 1983: 330;
Reddy 1991: 113; Misra 2001; Mohanty & Selvakumar 2002). How much the Iron Age-
Early Historic culture inuenced or was inuenced by other cultures can only be realised
once we have a clear picture of its evolution. This study shows that while all the Iron Age-
Early Historic burials at Siruthavoor had BRW pottery and iron implements, the burials
extend over a long time span and are of very different dates. This suggests that the presence
or absence of BRW pottery or iron implements alone cannot be used as an indicator of a
shared cultural phase.
Unless we understand how much of the typological differentiation is dependent on
chronology, it is difcult to understand the role of other parameters such as social, religious
or geological factors. The dates of the burials at Siruthavoor will help in understanding
how these Iron Age-Early Historic burials t into the overall chronology of the burials in
Tamilnadu. It will also help to understand roughly the time span for the Iron Age-Early
Historic burials at this site.
The social role played by the monumental burials may be informed by an analogy. A
study conducted in the Neolithic period of the north-west European loess zone showed
a marked difference between the Neolithic of Central and Western Europe. The former
has more settlement sites than burials, the latter the inverse; while settlement acted as a
means of keeping the community together in one area, the monument and its rituals did the
same job in the other (Sherratt 1990). The megalithic burials of Tamilnadu are obviously
contextually different, but using similar logic, some sort of communal spirit is an essential
factor for people who are producing iron, growing crops and herding animals, whether in
Europe or in India.
The larger issue raised by this paper is the importance of getting a clearer denition
and more precise chronology for these burials, in order to advance similar arguments about
their social role. The impact of metals and agriculture may have had a similar impetus on
cultures the world over, but in order to understand this better, localised phenomena need to
be studied objectively using absolute dating methodologies. Although the results presented
in this paper are site specic, they draw attention to the importance of scientic dates for
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the study of Iron Age-Early Historic culture, and focus on the scope for future work in this
area.
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to the Archaeological Survey of India, New Delhi, for granting permission to carry out
the excavation at Siruthavoor. We also thank Ms Sathyabhama Badreenath ASI, Chennai Circle, for logistical
support. The burials were excavated in collaboration with the Archaeological Survey of India, Chennai Circle,
and the Department of Geology, Anna University, Chennai. Smriti Haricharan was funded by an ICHR (New
Delhi) JRF fellowship. This work was carried out under the DST SSS project SR/S4/ES-21/Cauveri/P4. The
authors appreciate the invaluable comments given by Dr Himansu Kumar Kundu and Dr Kathleen Morrison on
various aspects of this paper, and are thankful to Mr Vinod R.V., Mr Thomas Babu, Gwen Kelly, Mr Narayan
Sharma and Mr Nagabhushan for helping with maps and images. The manuscript has beneted greatly from
the detailed and constructive comments of Prof. Carla Sinapoli and Prof. Robin Coningham. The authors thank
Martin Carver for his patience and understanding.
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Received: 2 April 2012; Accepted: 22 July 2012; Revised: 5 October 2012
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Haricharan - 2013 - Situating Megalithic Burials in The Iron

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Situating megalithic burials in the Iron

Age-Early Historic landscape of

105 BC (Possehl 1994) and AD 1550

110 and AD 1140

105 BC Habitation site BRW, amphorae Joshi 1993a; Possehl

135 BC Rouletted Ware, Grey

105 BC Possehl 1994

105 BC Possehl 1994

100 Megalithic, urn

125 Habitation sites

105 BC Early Historic

120 Habitation site BRW, Russet-Coated

125 BC Possehl 1994

105 BC Megalithic BRW Lal 1971; Possehl 1994

145 BC Possehl 1994

125 BC Possehl 1994

105 Possehl 1994

110 Late Neolithic BRW Ghosh 1969; Lal 1971;

195 Megalithic? Possehl 1994

105 Late Neolithic Possehl 1994

100 Megalithic? Possehl 1994

215 BC Late Neolithic Possehl 1994

105 BC Megalithic Possehl 1994

100 BC Megalithic Possehl 1994

105 Late Neolithic Possehl 1994

105 BC (Possehl 1994) (Table 2). The excavated materials from

120, was excavated in association

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