Rock Art in the Satpuras.pdf

Heritage: A Multidisplinary journal of Archaeology, 2020

In this paper, we have presented our preliminary analytical data on rock paintings recovered from some of the newly discovered prehistoric rock shelters of Panna District in Madhya Pradesh state. Results described in this paper are based on the extensive exploration of various painted rock shelters of the Panna District during the season of 2019. We have recovered three rock art sites. The analyzed paintings are presented systematically along with the main text. Each rock shelter has been described with respect to number of paintings of human, animals, flora-fauna etc. Analytical results revealed that the themes of paintings are mainly hunting, dancing, battle scene, food gathering, cattle rearing, and figures of animal, decorative motifs, handprints, historical paintings and geometric designs. The paintings recovered from all three rock shelters were made by using red or ochre (Geru) colour. Geomorphological and geographical estimations also suggested that these prehistoric rock art sites were mainly located near the water source and forest lands.

North Bengal Anthropologist annually, 2022

The rock art represents the evidence of aesthetic sense and expression of ideas. It constitutes a valuable source of visual information on the subsistence pattern and beliefs of early man. 'Rock art' refers to paintings and engraving done on wall of rock shelters. India is fortunate in possessing vast corpus of rock art, with its chronology ranging from Palaeolithic to Neolithic. The earliest universal documents created by man, and expressed in the form of pictographs and petroglyphs. Focus of the present study is to analyse rock art in Shamla hills in IGRMS campus in Bhopal district of Madhya Pradesh to reconstruct the past human behaviour and adaptation of prehistoric people with the particular environment as yielded in those art. The methodology has applied, data collection through exploration and mapping. The rock art had been analysed in photography method & advanced digital image tracing technique. Total 9 rock shelter has been studied & the present condition of the rock shelter has been discussed with an aim to protect cultural heritage site from destruction.

From Megaliths to Maritime Landscapes: Perspectives on Indo-Pacific Archaeology. SEAMEO SPAFA. Bangkok. Pp. 157-177, 2024

While the study of rock art has been conventionally the concern of prehistory, much of its content in the Northern Vindhyas, India, is in the historical period and requires a historical interrogation. While the early Holocene rock art here is contextually associated with non or semi-geometric microliths and can be regarded as Upper Palaeolithic, the more emphatic, extensive, and skilled rock art exposition is during the Mesolithic. Mesolithic North Vindhyan rock art also has more geometric microliths, large numbers of shelter-dwellings, prepared stone-floors, human and faunal remains, corded incised handmade Mesolithic pottery, grinding stones and occasional and Iron Age tools. On the scarps, paintings of large antelopes, cattle, buffalo, elephants, rhinos, turtles, varanus, and smaller deer species dominate the Mesolithic, while neolithic-chalcolithic and Iron Age depictions contain more human figures, domesticated cattle, buffalo, sheep, goat, and greater dress, hairstyle, self-images, palm-prints, iron-tools, three-dimensional perspectives, landscape simulations, superimpositions and narrative structure. Paintings show cognitively advanced choices in surface selection, the use of templates like three-dimensionality, perspective, and movement, in the selection and narrative rendering of historically oriented themes. Inter-group, identity-based differences between the several groups inhabiting the uplands and their conflicts are also represented. Historically structured materials like pastoral corrals, stelae, memorial stones, historical sculpture, and Brahmi inscriptions contextual to rock art, are found in the valleys and the foothills. Early historic trans-Indian trade routes occur in the Vindhyas and these routes are dotted with early historic inscriptions in the Brahmi script and its variants like Mauryan, Siddhamatrika, Shankha, proto-Nagari and Nagari. Their symbolic unity and continuity with upland symbolic traditions are many. Distinctly medieval rock art includes themes like soldiers, flag marches, hunting, and elephant capture by feudal lords. The final period of north Vindhyan rock art is colonial when paintings made by indigenes of the area depict the looting of colonial horse-carts and buggies after which rock art declines and disappears.

PDF provided by Eicher Goodearth India, the publishers

Commissioned for publication in Spain as part of Indo-Spanish collaboration on Rock Art, 2019

Rock art in Madhya Pradesh, predominantly pictographic, in open sand stone shelters, is also accompanied by a petroglyphic, mainly cup mark tradition. Its hallmark is a depiction of hunting, gathering and agro pastoral culture, continuing till today in the art and life ways of its hill and forest dwelling tribal people. The rock art style oscillates between iconic and non iconic, dynamic and static, figural and geometric, anatomical and non anatomical, natural and abstract, because of its Central Indian situation, which partakes of the stylistic preferences of surrounding eco cultural regions. It also shows a coexistence and overlap of cultures and a co occurrence of floral, faunal and crop assemblages from different chronological horizons. The relative isolation and inaccessibility of the region has preserved a heterogeneity and continuity of the subsistence technologies depicted in the rock art, which should help in carrying out replicative, experimental and cognitive archaeology, for relating the extensive material remains near rock shelters with the succession of occupation episodes and conceptual perceptions of the people living in these shelters. Ecological conservation of the rock art landscapes as living habitats of human and non human communities is essential for such research. The cognitive beginnings of humanity, preserved in Madhya Pradesh, have to be guarded against the relentless advance of predatory developmentalism and bio cultural reductionism, as irreplaceable human heritage.

Zeichen JOURNAL, 2022

This paper studies the prehistoric rock paintings from the site of Lakhudiyar in Almora district of Kumaon, Uttarakhand and highlights the geological and environmental background of the region with its cultural significance and its existence in the tradition of art and craft practices, still surviving artefacts or folk traditions of the region and identify how art was made and used, how the people who made it in the remote past must have lived.

Central Indian rock art is long known for its exceptional rock paintings; depicting crucial stages of human evolution in the subcontinent. The inception of its discovery was initiated by Carleylle from the Mirzapur region of Central India during the latter half of nineteenth century, the process continued till today. During the first part of the twenty first century a plethora of rock art site shave been discovered in India; particularly in Central India. It is relevant to mention here that the dataset is diverse and each rock art site has certain unique elements that other sites do not represent in their morphic record. However, the variations of the morphic details and nature of their occurrences in different rock shelters and even within the same group of rock-shelters have not been explored yet. The methodological rigor and sound documentation techniques brought to light several new sites in the region during a field survey of nine months between 2010 and 2012. New discoveries of painted rock-shelters enhanced the total number of archaeological sites found in the given region, but also this poses new challenges for the preservation and conservation of the archaeological sites for future research and posterity. This paper details a few new discoveries in the districts of Mirzapur and Rewa discussing their present and future importance in rock art research and archaeology in Central Indian context.

Rock Art of the Vindhyas: An Archaeological Survey, 2016

The publication of this book has been financially supported by the Indian Council of Historical Research. The responsibility for the facts stated or opinions expressed is entirely that of the author and not of the council. It has been published by Archaeopress Publishing Ltd, Oxford.