Paolo Biagi
Phone: +39 0412346324
Address: Department of Asian and North African Studies, Ca' Cappello, San Polo 2035, I-30125 Venezia
Address: Department of Asian and North African Studies, Ca' Cappello, San Polo 2035, I-30125 Venezia
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Papers by Paolo Biagi
chert from the Rohri Hills mines in Upper Sindh for making different types of artifacts. This paper
discusses the way chert was transported to the Indus Civilization centers and the problems related to
the type, quantity, and quality of raw material and artifacts that were transported, including when,
why, and where. This paper raises the question of land and water transport. Both these methods
were probably used according to the landscape location of the Indus sites. Another problem concerns
the landscape characteristics of the Indus Valley during the Bronze Age before the climate changes
that took place around the end of the third millennium cal BC and the disappearance of the Hakra
River, which was an important watercourse during the Indus phase. What do we know of the way
the Indus communities exploited, transported, and circulated knappable chert? Why have the Indus
settlements excavated around the Rohri Hills, the largest chert mines of the Indian Subcontinent,
yielded little evidence of chert artifacts and nodules? What do we know of this important problem,
which is strictly related to the everyday life of the Indus communities and their economy? Why this
problem has been systematically neglected by most archaeologists despite its importance?
of the Arabian Sea and the banks of the seasonal watercourses that flow into the Indian Ocean from the desert regions of the interior. The chronology of the Upper Palaeolithic complexes is difficult to define because the sites consist of surface knapped chert artefacts, in association with which organic material suitable for dating has never been retrieved. The prehistoric lithic assemblages recovered from the southernmost territories of Lower Sindh consist of typical instruments, among which are thick, curved, unilateral abrupt-retouched points obtained from core rejuvenation bladelike flakes. The blanks have been detached from corticated bipolar cores obtained from small chert
pebbles. Upper Palaeolithic workshops for the production of bladelet blanks are very common in the Rohri, Ongar and Daphro Hills near Sukkur and Kotri respectively.
throughout several millennia. This paper describes and discusses the evidence available mainly from two regions of the western and eastern Alpine arc, which are characterised by very different landscapes and yielded a great variety of archaeological features.