In 2022, Mayiladumparai in Tamil Nadu’s Krishnagiri district made headlines for being the oldest Iron Age site in the Indian subcontinent. The excavation report revealed that the Iron Age began in southern India as early as 2172 BCE, roughly 4,200 years ago, placing it contemporary to copper or bronze using settlements.
However, it was not long ago that the antiquity of iron in India was pushed back from 1000 BCE to 1800 BCE following the excavations at Malhar, Raja Nala ka Tila, Dadupur and Lauhradewa in Uttar Pradesh from 1996-2001 . It bridged the gap between the subcontinent’s Copper/Bronze Age and the first urbanisation which came with it, the Iron Age which paved the way for the second urbanisation. In contrast to the Malhar dates, discoveries from Mayiladumparai and a few sites in Telangana urge us to reassess a long-running debate on the genesis and spread of iron throughout the subcontinent.
The discovery challenges the established linearity of cultures—iron succeeded copper because it required a different kind of skill and a more advanced level of metallurgical expertise. This gives rise to another pertinent question: If iron is dated to 2172 BCE (late 3rd millennium BCE), then what would be its relationship with the neighbouring Chalcolithic (Copper using) settlements, and not just with Harappan Civilisation? Though it is hard to address these issues at this time, it is interesting to look at the evolution of iron.
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Story of iron
Scholars like V. Gordon Childe and Mortimer Wheeler in the 1950s recorded the Iron Age in India after 600-500 BCE. They were less convinced of early antiquity. They also placed a significant emphasis on the diffusion of iron from a single centre in the West into the subcontinent. Indian scholar DK Chakrabarti found “no logical basis to connect the beginning of iron in India with any diffusion from the west, from Iran and beyond”, and suggested “that India was a separate and possibly independent centre of manufacturing of early iron.”
This clarity came after the excavations at Hastinapur and Atranji Khera in UP, Jakhera in Rajasthan and Hallur in Karnataka, which placed iron in 1000 BCE, much earlier than the dates proposed by Childe and Wheeler. This period also coincided with the establishment of Painted Grey Ware’s association with iron in the north, and with Megalithic culture and black and red ware in southern India. Both of these associations extended the dates of iron to 1200 -1000 BCE.
At the Gufkral site in Pulwama district of Jammu and Kashmir, the Megalithic period was dated to 1500-1300 BCE, which opened the door to possibilities of early dates for iron. But it was the excavations at Malhar that pushed antiquity of iron towards the second millennium BCE.
Malhar
The archaeological site at Malhar is located on the banks of the Karamnasa, a tributary of the Ganga in UP. It was excavated by former Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), Rakesh Tiwari and the findings were published in the academic journal Antiquity in 2003. The report delved into a cultural sequence of four periods – Period I: Pre-Iron, Period II: Early Iron, Period III: Northern Black Polished Ware (NBPW), Period IV: 200-300 CE.
Iron is present in all layers of Period II dated between 1800-1000 BCE. Iron nail, clamp, spear-head, arrow-head, awl, knife, bangle, sickle and plough had been found during excavations. Moreover, waste in the form of iron slag, tuyeres and several elongated clay structures with a burnt internal surface link to iron manufacturing at the site.
Pottery associated with Period II included red ware, black and red ware, black slipped ware and grey ware. The associated pottery, according to Tiwari, is comparable to those generally considered as the characteristics of the Chalcolithic Period and placed in early to late second millennium BCE.
The excavator strongly believes that Malhar could have been a centre of iron production. A small mound discovered 500 m south of Malhar, locally known as lohsan or lohsanwa, yielded a heap of iron slag. The mound revealed two damaged clay furnaces. One of them filled with iron slag along with a few sherds of the red, grey, and black-slipped ware, an axe, and tuyeres.
A site known as Phakkada Baba, located north-west of Malhar, had also yielded evidence of damaged clay furnaces within heaps of iron slags along with tuyeres stuck with smelted iron. In addition to the findings at Malhar, iron-slag found in Naugarh Kot that the presence of the iron smelting industry continued at these sites for a long time. This entire region is archaeologically linked to the area of Geruwatwa Pahar—a major source of iron ore.
The work undertaken by Tiwari and his team at Malhar, Raja Nal-ka-tila in the Ganga Plains (1996-1998), Dadupur in Haryana (1999-2001) and eastern UP’s Lahuradewa (2001-2002) helped in concluding that knowledge of iron smelting and manufacturing of iron artefacts was well known in the subcontinent. Iron had been in use in the Ganga Plains from the early second millennium BCE.
Mayiladumparai
The cultural sequence at Mayiladumparai can be dated back to the Microlithic period, followed by the Neolithic, the Iron Age and finally the Early Historic period. It presents a habitation mound as well as a burial mound. The Iron Age megalithic burials such as cairn circles and sarcophagi have been unearthed, with iron goods in graves among other things. In a series of trenches excavated in 2021, two samples of charcoal were collected at depths of 104 cm and 130 cm respectively. These have yielded C14 AMS (Accelerator Mass Spectrometry dating is a method of determining the age of organic material by measuring the amount of radiocarbon or C14 in the sample) dates of 1672 BCE and 2172 BCE.
Contrary to popular belief, the black and red ware linked to the Megalithic period—which is the marker of Iron Age—has been found in the archaeological layers of the later neolithic period at Mayiladumparai. This could indicate a gradual and convergent transition between the two periods. The excavators claim that this smooth transition resulted in the early rise of iron usage in the region now called Tamil Nadu. Similar dates were recorded at Gachibowli, a site in Telangana, which also presents an early connection between Megalithic culture and the Iron Age.
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Iron age and Indian subcontinent
Two broad inferences can be drawn from the findings at Mayiladumpurai. First, the neolithic period, which has been confirmed to last until 2200 BCE based on the layers found in the stratigraphy at the site. Second, in contrast to previous assumptions, black and red ware appear to have been introduced during the later part of the neolithic era, indicating the existence of Iron Age culture.
The excavators claim that iron objects have been found in the layers dating back to 2172 BCE but the site’s excavation report does not mention the presence of iron in the strata from which charcoal was collected.
According to experts in ancient metallurgy, such as Vibha Tripathi, there were three phases of development of iron technology in India: Early Iron Age (from early times to 600 BCE); Middle Iron Age (8th /7th c. BCE to 2nd c. CE) and Late Iron Age (2nd c. CE to 6th c. CE).
These three phases indicate the introduction of iron followed by diffusion of iron technology and then widespread usage in the subcontinent. In fact, Tiwari also suggested while talking about evidence from Malhar that “the quantity and type of iron artefacts and technical advancement indicate that the introduction of iron working took place even earlier.”
It is unclear as to how early we can place the introduction of iron. But should we place it as early as 2172 BCE?
Interesting as these new dates from Mayiladumparai are, it is advised to look more into the contextual data. More reports from the sites may throw light (on the evidence lost in translation in the report) on the artefacts and iron objects reported to be of iron age. Till then I can only echo what pioneering scientist and archaeologist DP Agarwal once said, “Fear of new discoveries should not come in our way of reconstruction of the past. New data will always force revision; that is the way of all research.”
Disha Ahluwalia is an archaeologist and junior research fellow at the Indian Council Of Historical Research. She tweets @ahluwaliadisha. Views are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)