Vedic Period |
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Chalcolithic (3500–1500 BC)
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Bronze Age (3300–1300 BC)
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Sangam period | (c. 300 BC – c. 300 AD) | |||||||||||||
| Pandya Empire | (c. 300 BC – AD 1345) | |||||||||||||
| Chera Kingdom | (c. 300 BC – AD 1102) | |||||||||||||
| Chola Empire | (c. 300 BC – AD 1279) | |||||||||||||
| Pallava Empire | (c. 250 AD – AD 800) | |||||||||||||
| Maha-Megha-Vahana Empire | (c. 250 BC – c. AD 500) | |||||||||||||
| Parthian Empire | (247 BC – AD 224) |
| Portuguese India | (1510–1961) |
| Dutch India | (1605–1825) |
| Danish India | (1620–1869) |
| French India | (1759–1954) |
| Company Raj | (1757–1858) |
| British Raj | (1858–1947) |
The Ahar culture, also known as the Banas culture is a
More than 90 sites of the Ahar culture have been identified to date. The main distribution seems to be concentrated in the river valleys of Banas and its tributaries. A number of sites with Ahar culture level are also found from
In 2003 excavations at Gilund, archaeologists discovered a large cache of seal impressions dating to 2100–1700 BC. A large bin filled with more than 100 seal impressions was found by a team led by archaeologists from the
The design motifs of the seals are generally quite simple, with wide-ranging parallels from various
Ahar-banas culture: Based on the pottery excavated here, this site is considered as a separate archaeological culture / subculture.[3]
Typical Ahar pottery is a Black-and-Red ware (BRW) with linear and dotted designs painted on it in white pigment[4] and has a limited range of shapes, which include bowls, bowls-on-stands, elongated vases and globular vases. The Ahar culture also had equally distinctive brightly slipped Red Ware, a Tan ware, ceramics in Burnished Black that were incised Thin Red ware, as well as incised and otherwise decorated Gray ware fabrics.[1]
The pottery had a black top and reddish bottom, with paintings in white on the black surface. Because of these distinctive features, Ahar, when it was first noticed by R C Agrawal, was called the "black and red ware culture".[citation needed] This is in a way true, because this was primarily the pottery used by the inhabitants of Ahar for drinking and eating.
