Painted Grey Ware in India
Painted Grey Ware (PGW) is a very fine, smooth, and even-coloured grey pottery, with a thin fabric. It was made out of well-worked, very high quality clay. Designs, mostly simple geometric patterns were painted on the pots in black. The uniform colour and texture of the pots indicates very sophisticated firing techniques.
Characteristics of Painted Grey ware culture was a deluxe ware, forming a very small percentage of the total pottery assemblage at the levels at which these were found. It occurs along with other pottery types such as plain grey ware, Black and Red Ware (BRW) and black slipped ware, which were perhaps used in everyday life.
The dates of the Painted Grey Ware culture range from 1100-500/400 BCE and the sites show a wide geographical distribution, stretching from the Himalayan foothills to the Malwa plateau in central India, and from the Bahawalpur region of Pakistan to Kaushambi near Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh. Apart from the plains it has been found in the hilly regions of Kumaon and Garhwal. Sporadic potsherds were found at a few places like Vaishali in Bihar, Lakhiyopur in Sind and Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh.
Characteristics of Painted Grey ware culture in India.
The main concentration of the sites is however Chalcolithic Cultures , in the Indo-Gangetic divide, Sutlej basin, and upper Ganga plains. There are regional variations of this culture both in the pottery as well in associated remains. In the archaeological sequence of the Ganga valley the PGW phase is followed by the Northern Black Polished Ware (NBPW).
Painted Grey Ware was first identified at Ahichchhatra in the 1940’s but its full significance was understood only after excavations at Hastinapur in 1954- 55. Since then important evidence of the PGW material culture is available from excavated sites like Alamgirpur, Mathura, Bhagwanpura, Kaushambi, Sravasti and others. It occurs in four kinds of stratigraphic contexts. At some sites it is preceded by a late Harappan level, with an intervening break in occupation.
At other sites there is an overlap between the Painted Grey Ware and the Late Harappan phase. At some sites it is preceded by the OCP culture, with a break in between. And at other sites the PGW phase is preceded by a BRW phase, with a break in between. At the upper end PGW overlaps with the NBP culture. Recent excavations at Abhaipur, Pilibhit district, Uttar Pradesh, have thrown interesting light on this culture (Mishra 2010). It is a multi-cultural site with OCP forming the earliest deposit, followed by the Black-and-Red Ware (BRW) phase, which is succeeded by the PGW phase, the final phase of occupation at the site being that of NBPW.
At Abhaipur, human burials have been found, the first such occurrence at any PGW site. However, human skeletons were also discovered in the Late Harappa PGW interlocking stage at Bhagwanpura. Structural remains at PGW levels consist mainly of wattle-and-daub and mud huts. Unbaked bricks and one baked brick were found at Hastinapura. Jakhera represents a fairly-evolved proto-urban stage of this culture.
The PGW sites indicate a subsistence base that included cultivation of rice, wheat and barley. Double cropping was possibly practiced. There is no actual evidence of irrigation facilities, but a few deep circular pits outside the habitation area at Atranjikhera are indicative of kachcha wells. Animal husbandry was also practiced.
The association of iron with PGW has drawn the attention of archaeologists for long. There have been a series of debates on the impact of iron technology at the beginnings of urbanism in the Ganga valley known as second urbanization. Regarding PGW phase, it is seen that iron is not associated with this cultural level at all the sites. It is not present at the sites in Ghaggar-Hakra area or in the Bikaner region. At sites like Jakhera and Kaushami iron has been found at pre-PGW BRW levels. But in the Ganga-Yamuna doab the earliest iron objects are usually associated with PGW.
Most of the iron artefacts seem to be connected with war or hunting, like arrowheads, spearhead, blades, daggers etc. However, clamps, sockets, rods, rings etc. which could have been connected with carpentry have also been found. The mature PGW phase at Jakhera has also given important evidence of iron implements used in agriculture like a sickle, ploughshare and hoe. Detailed studies of settlement patterns associated with PGW phase have been carried out. Here one could mention Makkhan Lal’s study of the Kanpur district and Erdosy’s study of the PGW settlements in Allahabad district.