Archaeobotanical remains in ancient cultural and socioeconomical dynamics of the Indian subcontinent

Abstract

The paper describes the ancient plant economy in the Indian subcontinent in a chronological framework of cultural development from the earliest Neolithic cultures of primitive village- farming communities to highly advanced Iron Age cultures of Early Historical Period around the beginning of the Christian Era. In an impressive array of archaeobotanical data generated during the last four decades, some of the salient developments include the earliest evidence of west Asian cereal cultivation dated to C. 7,000 B.C., in Neolithic Baluchistan, Pakistan, and the earliest evidence of rice cultivation during sixth millennium B.C. in the Middle Ganga Valley, India. Similarly, other notable developments sifted from the data include the viticulture and cultivation of some garden plants by the Harappans in Punjab and evidences of highly systematised and rational medicinal plants from the Iron Age cultures in Ghaghra Valley of eastern Uttar Pradesh deciphering the meaningful perspective of medicinal history in the Indian archaeological context. Throughout the cultural development from Harappan times to the end of first millennium B.C. the records of crop remain of West Asian, African and indigenous origin from widely scattered sites indicate well-knit trade contacts and socio-economic and cultural integration which kept evolving in new forms during the course of growth and fading of heterogeneous cultural groups in diverse geographical regions. Several new advances in the recovery and analysis of plant remain during the recent past hold out the possibility of obtaining new informations which may drastically change our existing archaeobotanical concepts.