Chapter I Introduction

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION This study deals with the settlement pattern of the Middle and Lower Ganga Valley from the beginning of the Pa 1 aeo 1 i th ^ Jto the end of the Neo1ithic-Cha1co1ithic period. Study of settlement pattern is concerned with the interrelationship between man and his environment. In archaeology it is mainly a study of spatial distribution of human activity in relation to landscape, soils, climate, water sources, flora and fauna. Settlement pattern studies can be traced back to the later part of the last century by L.H. Morgan (1881). His book House and House Life of the Amer i can Abor ig i nes mainly concerned with the question of how the remains of aboriginal residential architecture in North America reflected the social organisation of the prehistoric people who occupied them. In the 1930s J. Steward (1937, 1938) further promoted these studies in the field of Archaeology. G.R. Willey, who was inspired by Steward’s work, defines settlement pattern as "the way in which man disposed himself over the landscape on which he lived. It refers to dwellings, to their arrangement and to the nature and disposition of other buildings, pertaining to community life. These settlements reflect the natural environment, the level of technology on which the builders operated and various institutions of social interaction and control which the culture maintained. Because settlement patterns are, to a large extent, directly shaped by widely held cultural needs, they offer a strategic starting point for the functional interpretation of archaeological cultures' (Willey (1953:1). Before Willey, archaeologists were mainly interested in cultural reconstruction but Willey’s settlement pattern studies in the Viru Valley (1953) and the volume of settlement patterns studies edited by him (Willey 1956) for the first time offered a systematic methodological framework for a conjuctive approach. Willey observed that the study of settlement patterns would force the archaeologists to imagine the site phenomena as representing depositional units or categories of prehistoric activity. He insisted that the settlement pattern study should not be treated as a closed and self-contained system or method but as a part of the total archaeological operation. E.Z. Vogt (1956) formulated the scope of settlement pattern study as a description of: 1) the nature of individual domestic house type or types; 2) the spatial arrangement of these house types with respect to one another within the village or community unit; 3) the relationship of domestic house types to other spatial archilectural features; 4) the overall village or community plan; and 5) the spatial relationships of villages and communities to one another over as large an area as feasible. He found three types of most appropriate interrelated interpretat ions; i) which explores the relationship of living arrangements to geographical features such as topography, soil, vegetation types or rainfall zones. 2) which focuses upon the social structural inferences that can be made about sociopolitical and ceremonial organization, and 3) which concentrates upon the study of change through time with a view to providing materials for generalizing about the cultural processes. W.T. Sanders (1956) emphasized more on analysing the distribution of human settlements in the context of agricultural systems, local specialisation and inter-regional exchange. He distinguished between community settlement pattern and zonal settlement patterns. According to him community pattern comprises the individual units of population, types of communities, organisation of public buildings, streets and population distribution and form, density of community population and house types. The zonal settlomenL pattern is concerned with the distribution of community size, distances between communities, density of population and the symbiotic relationship between communi ties. K.C. Chang (1958) distinguished between the two meanings of settlement pattern: 1) settlement pattern, and 2) community pattern. He defined settlement pattern as 'the manner in which human settlements are arranged over the landscape in relation to physiographic geographic environments’ and community pattern as 'the manner in which the inhabitants arrange their various structures within the community and their communities within the aggregate’. According to him the term aggregate means 'a gathering of certain number of communities which are bound by close social, political, commercial or religious ties’. Later on K.C. Chang (1962:14) devised a typology of the time- space relationship of settlement components on the basis of ethnographical material from the circumpolar region. He categorized settlement patterns into two types: 1) Year-round settlement, within which the annual cycle of main subsistence activities of occupants can be completed. This type has been further subdivided into two: a) Permanent settlement: occupies a locale permanently; and b) Semipermanent settlement: abandons a locale after one year’s or several years’ occupancy because (among other factors) the ecological potential of the place is exhausted and occupants are unable to restore it. 2) Seasonal settlement-complex: a network of seasonal settlements occupied by a group of people in turn in differetit seasons of year, distributed within the confines of an annual subsistence region. He further subdivided this type into two: a) Sedentary seasonal settlements: annual subsistence region of a group of occupants remaining permanently unchanged. i) With permanent bases: locales of main seasonal settlements remain i)ermanently unchanged. ii) With transient bases: locales of the various seasonal settlements (particularly main sites of occupation) keep changing after one year’s or several years occupancy because (among oLher factors) the ecological potential of particular locales is exhausted and the occupants are unable to restore it, though the whole annual subsistence region of the group remains unchanged, b) Temporary seasonal settlements: a group of people has to change its habitation from one annual subsistence region to another after one year’s or several years’ occupancy because (among other factors) the ecological potential of the whole region is exhausted and occupants are unable to restore it. II. D. Winters (1969) has developed the concept of 'settlement system’ which is a refinement of Chang’s ‘annual subsistence region’. He distinguishes between settlement pattern and settlement system. According to him settlement pattern is ’the geographic and physiographic relationship of a contemporaneous group of sites within a single culture*. Settlement system on the other hand, 'refers to the functional relationship among the contemporaneous group of sites within a single culture’. A very significant contribution to the field of settlement archaeology has made by Bruce G. Trigger (1967, 1968, 1978) who has suggested three levels of settlement pattern study: i) Individual building or structure: The individual structures are affected by several factors like subsistence regime, availability of building materials, environment, skill and technology of builders, members of the family, differences in wealth and rank, other social institutions and special needs, political institutions, religious beliefs and specialization of product ion. ii) Community layout: In the community layout buildings or structures are arranged within a single community. Environment and subsistence technology, family and kinship organization, classes, religious and ethnic groups are the determinants of the settlement pattern of a community, iii) Zonal Pattern : Density or distribution of population of a region is affected by the nature and availability of natural resources, trade, political organization, warfare, religious and symbolic factors, migration and population change. Some important studies of settlement pattern at the zonal level are those of V.G. Childe (1934), C. Fox (1934), W.R. Bullard (1960), G.R.J. Jones (1960, 1961), R.M. Adams (1961, 1965), G.R. Willey ^ ajK (1965), B.G. Trigger (1967), M.D. Coe and K.V. Flannery (1967), J.E. Fitting (1968), A. Fleming (1971, 1972), J.R. Parson (1971), D.L. Clarke (1972), D.A. Davidson (1972), B. Soudsky and I. Pavlu (1972), C. Renfrew (1972) and K.V. Flannery (1976). In India settlement studies have been carried out by N. Akther (1972), M.K. Dhavalikar (1977, 1978, 1984), M.K. Dhavalikar and G.L. Possehl (1974), G.L. Possehl (1982), Y.M. Chitalwala (1977, 1982), Suraj Bhan (1977), M. Lai (1978, 1984), K.N. Dikshit (1979), V. Shinde (1984, 1990), B. David Raju (1985, 1990), Reba Ray (1987) and P.C. Venkatasubbaiah (1992). The present work is based on Trigger’s third ley^l af settleraejit pattern i.e. zonal pattern. Study Area The study area consists of the Middle and Lower Ganga valley. The o o o o Middle Ganga plain (24 30’- 27 50’ N : 81 47’-87 50’ E) has an area of 144,409 sq km. and covers the plain area of eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The region lies between the Himalaya in the north and the Peninsula in the south. Physically, the plain can be broadly divided into two parts: a) the Ganga Plain north, and b) the Ganga Plain south. Except for minor variations, the former is approximately 30 to 100 m above the mean sea level while the latter is roughly marked by the 150 m contour. Tho entire area is an alluvial plain. Geologically, the alluvium has been divided into two: a) Bhangar or older alluvium deposited during the Pleistocene and containing high percentage of lime

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