Early Iron Age in the Northwest of Subcontinent G. Stacul, 1979. in Essay in Indian Protohistory, edt. D.P.

. Agrawal and D.K. Chakrabarti. (Published on behalf of The Indian Society for Prehistoric and Quaternary Studies) B. R. Publishing Corporation, Delhi. The first excavation carried out on a systematic basis permitting to throw light on a chronological sequence in the north-west regions of the subcontinent, in protohistoric period, was supervised by Sir Mortimer Wheeler at Bala Hisar near Charsada in the Peshawar plain in 1958 (Wheeler 1962). A particularly significant piece of information evidenced by this excavation is that right down to the earliest level of Bala Hisar iron was in use. Wheeler has provisionally referred the earliest settlement phase at Bala Hisar to about the middle of the 6th century B. C. Since he maintains that it is possible to correlate the introduction of the use of iron-working in the subcontinent with the invasion of the Gandhara region by the Achaemenids in the time of Cyrus or of Darius. The most characteristic features of the earliest settlement phase at Bala Hisar (Charsada I, layers 51-41), are some recurrent well-defied key forms and fabrics in the pottery: the rippled rim and the soapy red wares. Among the vase shapes, the following ones may be especially distinguished : the large vases with short flared rim, the large vases with high funnel-mouth, the cordoned bowls and the bell-shaped vases with low carination and disc-base. Further excavations in the Swat Valley and in the Panjkora Valley, that is in the mountain regions lying to the north of the Peshawar plain, have led us to recognize here also the key-forms and fabrics typical of the earliest layers of Charsada. Particular in the Swat Valley, where a sequence of chronologically and culturally different protohistoric period has been identified, the same stylistic horizon may be allocated to a period stretching from the end of the second millennium to the beginning of the first millennium B.C. (middle-late phase of the Peirod V in the Ghaligai and Aligrama sequences) (Stacul, 1969 a). In the protohistoric graveyards of Loebanr, Katelai and Butkara II in the Swat Valley, where 475 graves have been excavated, no other iron finds ascribable to the Period V (the graves of this period amount to 136) or to the Period VI (159 graves) have been discovered. The numerous metal finds from these graves- with the only exception we have already indicated-are always copper objects. It is only in the period VII, going back not before the 4th century B. C., that graves were provided not only with copper objects, but also with iron metal ones. We can even state that the most characteristic feature of the Period VII in the Swat Valley is, namely, the sudden large presence of iron metal objects. Out of a total of 56 graves dating back to this period, more than a half yielded iron metal objects. It should be noted that, owing to the development of iron metallurgy, absolutely new types of implements and objects, not

documented in earlier periods, were introduced in Swat, especially as far as weapons are concerned. These evidences have essentially been substantiated by further excavations at the settlement site of Aligrama, near Mingora, where several development phases of the Periods V and VI are documented. At Aligrama no iron find came from layers of the Period V. The earliest evidence of iron metal objects has occurred in layers ascribed to the late Period VI, supposedly between the 5th and the early 4th century B. C. They are three fragments of pins and a laminar object of an indefinable shape. Similar documentations are yielded by the excavations the University of Peshawar has carried out in the lower Swat (graveyard of Thana) and the Panjkora Valley (graveyard of Timargarha), where in the graves with iron finds there are vases and objects almost identical those typical of our Period VII. A further corroboration is given by the excavations we have effected in the Buner and in the Chitral regions, where iron objects have always occurred in graves provided with a furnishing showing a close similarity with that usually found in the period VII in the Swat Valley (Dani, 1967; Stacul, 1967, 1969b). Consequently, the conclusions that the Iron Age in the Swat Valley and in the adjacent mountain regions did not begin before the 4th century B.C., can be drawn. It is indeed only in the 4th century B. C., in the Period VII, that the spreading of iron working has determined in the Swat Valley, the introduction of new types of objects and caused consequent inevitable changes in working methods and in weapon use. It has thus marked the beginning of a new era. The scanty and occasional occurrence to iron finds in earlier periods certainly of significance if the objects were actually produced by a locally developed metallurgy, has not changed, in the main, the overall picture of local cultures, where metal products consisted predominantly for a long time of small copper objects. The problem is perhaps somewhat different in the Peshawar plain, where Wheeler has collected evidence on the occurrence of iron materials even in the deepest archaeological layers of Charsada. Wheeler has provisionally ascribed the earliest settlement phase at Charsasa to about 550 B.C. on the basis of the assumptions we have previously indicated. However the similarity between the pottery from these layers and that typical for the Period V in the Swat Valley and the adjacent regions is so close and clear that it is quite probable that the date of the deepest archeological layer of Charsada is earlier than that previously assumed.