Iron and RV dating

[Steve Farmer]

Anand M. Sharan writes (of Anun Gupta's post re iron technology):

> The metallurgy in India was fairly well developed by the dates you mention
> about Hitites [i.e., c. 1200 BCE].

Not according to the recent detailed review by Possehl and
Gullapalli (in Piggott 1999). According to their careful
region-by-region survey of the archaeological data, there were
wide regional differences in the first use of non-meteoric iron
in India, with dates in the Ganges valley (see below) being
especially late.

In general, Possehl and his collaborator note (p. 165), also
citing Chakrabarti 1985, that "a region-by-region analysis shows
that the existence of a pan-Indian Iron Age is highly doubtful."
Even the dates for the Pirak assemblage of the Greater Indus
Valley in Pakistan - previously assigned earlier dates - need to
be rethought. Possehl and his collaborator write that the "theory
that it begins as early as 1200 or 1300 B.C. may not be as
justified as positing a somewhat later date, perhaps
approximately 900 B.C., for which there are three very consistent
radiocarbon dates."

What is really striking in their review, however, are the very
*late* dates they assign for iron working in the Ganges Valley -
deep into the first millennium (with the exception of one
possible exception, the earliest artefacts date from around 900
BCE at the earliest to 300 BCE at the latest, depending on the
site). Pushing the dates this far forward potentially has deep
implications for dating the RV and later Vedic sources, most of
which were apparently redacted in this region.

Steve Farmer