Jorwe culture

Topic: Prehistory: Human Origins and Stone Age Cultures · NCERT: Beyond NCERT

Meaning

The Jorwe culture was a Chalcolithic (copper-stone) farming culture of Maharashtra, c. 1400–700 BCE. It is named after the type-site Jorwe on the Pravara river, a tributary of the Godavari, in Ahmednagar district. Its main sites are Inamgaon, Daimabad, Nevasa and Chandoli, and its hallmark is red pottery painted in black.

It matters because it shows village farming spreading across the Deccan after the Harappan cities declined. It also shows that stone tools and copper tools stayed in use together for a long time.

Explanation

Background: copper comes to the Deccan

• Chalcolithic means "copper-stone". People still used stone tools, but they had also started to make objects of copper. Stone did not stop; copper was simply added.
• By 2500 BCE, Neolithic agro-pastoral groups lived across most of the subcontinent. "Agro-pastoral" means they farmed and herded animals at the same time. In some places they mixed with copper-using Chalcolithic neighbours.
• The Jorwe culture grew out of this later belt of Chalcolithic cultures in western and central India. Another culture in this belt was Ahar–Banas in Rajasthan. [2]
• In the Deccan, an earlier Chalcolithic culture, usually called the Malwa culture, came before Jorwe. At Inamgaon, Jorwe follows Malwa in the same mound.

Main features

• Pottery (Jorwe ware). Red or orange pottery painted with black designs. It is usually wheel-made and has a dull (matt) surface. Common shapes include spouted jars and carinated bowls, meaning bowls with a sharp angle in the side wall.
• Tools. Small sharp stone blades (microliths, tiny stone tools often fixed into handles) and polished stone axes were used alongside a small number of copper tools. Copper was scarce and costly.
• Copper objects. Daimabad has yielded well-known copper objects of the Chalcolithic period. [5]
• Settlements.
• These were villages of mud houses, some with wattle-and-daub walls (woven sticks plastered with mud).
• Houses were rectangular or round.

• Daimabad is usually described as the largest Jorwe settlement.

• Farming and herding. People grew cereals, pulses and millets and kept cattle, sheep and goats. They lived by both farming and herding.

• Burials. The dead, especially children, were often buried in pots (urns) under the floors of houses, not in a separate cemetery.
• Seals and art. At the Jorwe levels of excavation, archaeologists found five structural phases and a terracotta cylinder seal showing a procession: a horse drawing a cart, a deer behind it, and a long-necked animal, perhaps a camel. [4]

How it changed over time: the Inamgaon sequence

• Inamgaon (Pune, Maharashtra) has three occupation periods: Period I (1600–1400 BC), Period II (1400–1000 BC), Period III (1000–700 BC). [3]
• According to the usual reading of the site:
• Period I is the earlier Malwa phase.
• Period II is Early Jorwe, when villages were large and well-off.

• Period III is Late Jorwe, when settlements became smaller and poorer.

• Why Late Jorwe declined (probable cause):

• Many scholars link it to a drier climate after c. 1000 BCE.
• Less rain meant poorer harvests.
• People turned more to herding and moved more often, so villages shrank or were abandoned.

Results

• The Jorwe culture spread settled village life widely across the Deccan plateau.
• It shows that Chalcolithic life lasted a long time in Maharashtra. At Inamgaon it runs to 700 BC. [3]
• It never became urban. It had no cities, no writing and no large-scale trade like the Harappan civilisation.

Time, place and evidence

• Period: c. 1400–700 BCE. These are approximate dates, based mainly on the Inamgaon sequence. [3]
• Region: Maharashtra, mainly the Godavari–Pravara and Bhima river basins of the western Deccan.
• Named sites:
• Jorwe (Ahmednagar district) — the type-site that gave the culture its name.
• Inamgaon (Pune) — the best-studied site, with three occupation periods. [3]
• Daimabad (Ahmednagar district) — copper objects of the Chalcolithic period. [5]

• Nevasa and Chandoli — other important Jorwe sites.

• How we know:

• Excavation layers (stratigraphy) at Inamgaon, which give the dated sequence. [3]
• The terracotta cylinder seal and five structural phases found at the Jorwe levels, recorded by the Archaeological Survey of India. [4]
• Copper objects from Daimabad, held in national photo-archive records. [5]

• Human tooth enamel from Chalcolithic Inamgaon, studied for carbon and oxygen isotopes to learn about diet and environment. [3]

• There are no written records. This is a prehistoric (more exactly, protohistoric) culture known only through archaeology.

Don't confuse with

• Ahar–Banas culture — a Chalcolithic culture of Rajasthan, not Maharashtra. It was contemporary with the Indus civilisation and is known for terracotta seals. [2] Jorwe is later and lies in the Deccan.
• Malwa culture — the Chalcolithic culture that came before Jorwe in the Deccan. It is Inamgaon Period I; Jorwe is Periods II–III.
• Harappan (Sindhu–Sarasvatī) civilisation — a Bronze Age urban civilisation with planned cities and a script. Jorwe was a rural Chalcolithic culture with no cities and no writing.
• Southern Neolithic (Sanganakallu, Utnur, Kodekal) — stone-tool-using herders of Karnataka, known for ash mounds. [1] Jorwe people also used copper, so they are Chalcolithic, not Neolithic.

Prelims Hooks

• Jorwe culture → Maharashtra. The type-site Jorwe lies on the Pravara river, a tributary of the Godavari.
• Key Jorwe sites: Inamgaon, Daimabad, Nevasa, Chandoli. All are in Maharashtra, so a trap option naming a Rajasthan site (Ahar, Gilund) is wrong.
• Inamgaon (Pune) periods: I (1600–1400 BC), II (1400–1000 BC), III (1000–700 BC). [3]
• A terracotta cylinder seal showing a horse-drawn cart, a deer and a possible camel came from the Jorwe levels. [4]
• Daimabad is known for copper objects of the Chalcolithic period. [5]
• Chronological order: Mehrgarh Neolithic (c. 7000 BCE) → Harappan civilisation (c. 3500 BCE onward) → Jorwe culture (c. 1400–700 BCE).

Mains Points

• The ages overlap; they are not neat boxes. The Jorwe people used stone blades together with scarce copper, and Inamgaon stays Chalcolithic until 700 BC. [3] This shows that the Stone–Copper–Bronze–Iron scheme is a teaching tool, not a timetable every region followed in step.
• Village life continued after the Harappan cities declined. Jorwe shows settled farming spreading across the Deccan in the 2nd millennium BCE, without cities or writing. So the end of Harappan cities did not mean the end of settled life in the subcontinent. Rural cultures carried farming, pottery and craft skills forward.
• Environment shaped settlement. The shift from large Early Jorwe villages to smaller, poorer Late Jorwe ones is often explained by a drier climate after c. 1000 BCE. Studies such as tooth-enamel isotope work at Inamgaon help test these ideas about diet and environment. [3] This makes a good GS-I example of how climate and ecology affect early societies.

Related concepts

• Mehrgarh
• Burzahom
• Gufkral
• Chirand
• Koldihwa
• Mahagara
• Lahuradewa
• Daojali Hading
• Sarutaru
• Brahmagiri

Read more

• Neolithic and Chalcolithic in the subcontinent