Savanna India

The case for a truly independent origin of agriculture in South Asia is strongest in the southern peninsula of India. Here we have clear evidence for the domestication of crops from local wild progenitors, including millets and pulses.

The earliest dates for the Neolithic of south India come from the sites of Kodekal, Utnur, and Watgal and date the earliest Neolithic settlements to c. 3000 bce (Southern Neolithic phase 1a).^{[554] [555]} These sites have occupation levels with ceramics, but no ashmounds and very few plant or animal remains. Dates from Budihal, Brahmagiri, Piklihal, and Utnur, among others, place the start of Southern Neolithic phase 1b at around 2500 bce. This phase saw the emergence of ashmounds as well as herding of cattle, sheep, and goats. However, there is no evidence of domesticated crops. By 2200 bce (Southern Neolithic phase 2), village sites such as those at Sanganakallu and Tekkalakota appear across the hilltops of the southern peninsula and evidence for crop plants emerges. By 1800 bce (Southern Neolithic phase 3), ashmounds cease to be used, although village sites continue to be occupied, in some cases with continuous occupation up to the Megalithic period,

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Unlike the rest of India, where early agriculture was synonymous with cereal farming, southern agriculture appears to have taken an alternative route via pastoralism. Cattle, sheep, and goat bones have been recovered from the earliest deposits at nearly every excavated ashmound.^[556] The major­ity of ashmounds are situated in the driest parts of the peninsula, on a granitic geology with sandy soils, and fewer in the better-watered black soils in adjacent areas. These areas today remain relatively uncultivated. This settle­ment pattern can be seen to reflect the relative unimportance of crops to the early mobile pastoralists occupying this area.^[557] The growth of agricultural settlements after 2000 bce indicates both sedentism, with increasing culti­vation, and also the resilience of indigenous cultivation systems against an environmental aridification trend.^[558]

Radiocarbon dating shows that ashmounds generally grew over a rela­tively short timeframe of around 100-200 years. At the end of their lives they were either abandoned or succeeded by sedentary village sites. Some of the abandoned ashmounds were subsequently restarted, leading to larger accumulations over extended periods, but consisting of multiple, discrete 100-200-year episodes. For example, Kudatini and Palavoy show abandon­ment periods within their sections and the accumulation of natural soils.^[559] Why these ashmounds were re-established, while others were abandoned or developed into sedentary villages, remains unclear.

The role of the ashmounds, whether purely symbolic or utilitarian, is not really known. The preservation of cattle hoof prints within some ash­mounds suggests that they were large cattle pens, at least initially. However, as mounds developed they became somewhat ‘monumental' in their own right. For example, at Budihal, upper layers indicate that the dung was layered in deliberate patties.^[560]1 Visually, these large burning mounds of dung would have been incredibly striking and visible from across large tracts of the landscape, both foci for large social gatherings and iconic features in the landscape that signified past events.^[561] The importance of seasonal gatherings in facilitating trade, marriage arrangements, and the genetic mixing of cattle herds can all be considered.

Ashmounds, located in the lower plains, have frequently been found in the vicinity of hilltop settlement sites dating to the same period. Only a few of these settlements have been excavated, and it is from these that the majority of the archaeobotanical remains of crops come. The nature of the interaction between these types of site has not been comprehensively investigated, but it has been suggested that these were seasonal encamp­ments of a transhumant segment of society. They might have come to these sites near permanent hill villages in the post-harvest period of winter, allowing animals to graze stubble and add to field fertility, and exchanging animal products for crop produce.^[562] More isolated ashmounds have been interpreted as dry-season social gathering sites, perhaps near the borders between tribal territories.^[563]

Once agricultural crops begin to appear in the archaeological record, it is at habitation sites on the hilltops overlooking the plains that they are found. It seems likely, therefore, that the hilltop sites were the centres from which most crop farming took place. The key feature of this farming is that it was based on native plants. The staple crops of the southern Neolithic were two small millets (Brachiaria ramosa and Setaria verticillata) and two pulses (Macrotyloma uniflorum and Vigna radiata). The wild progenitors of these species were likely present in the local environment in the woodlands and forest margins of the Deccan and Western Ghats. The small millets are still fairly common in the riverine zones and savannas of the region and fre­quently appear as weeds within millet fields.

By 1900 bce some of the sites indicate the adoption of winter crops from the north (wheat, barley, grass pea), while by 1500 bce the agricultural systems had diversified, with summer crops from elsewhere. The late Neolithic adoptions included pigeon pea (Cajanus cajan) from Odisha^[565] and crops of African origin: hyacinth bean (Lablab purpureus), pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum), sorghum (Sorghum bicolor), and finger millet (Eleusine coracana),^[566] although none of the latter displaced the indigenous millets as staple grains. Cotton, flax, and fruit tree aboriculture also probably date from this period.^[567]

The ecological background to the movement of the native species from their natural environment into manmade contexts has been explored, and it has been suggested that as the area became more arid in the late Holocene, forests retreated and food resources, including pulses and millets, from the forest margins became scarce.^[568] This scarcity encouraged people to manage wild stands of edible plants, which increased their productivity, eventually leading to an entangled relationship between plants and humans that gave rise to domesticated crops.^[569] For early farmers in this area, the comparative availability of wild foods would have reduced reliance on cultivated, or managed, plants. As aridity increased, these foods were less available, perhaps contributing to the diversification of agriculture seen c. 2000-1400 bce. Expanding the range of cultivated crops creates a buffer against detrimental environmental variants, such as drought. Where one crop might fail, another, the insurance crop, will succeed. In addition finger millet can be stored for a very long period of time with little loss of grain, a characteristic exploited in the risk-avoidance strategies of societies living in arid and semi- arid environments today.