A Study on the Painted Grey Ware

 https://www.academia.edu/38059410/A_Study_on_the_Painted_Grey_Ware

Key points from the paper: (Just read Summary section if short on time)

• Bara style pottery has clear roots in Indus/Harappan and Sothi-Siswal pottery of Ghagra valley.
• PGW is localized to Western Ganga (WG) valley and Eastern Ghagra. PGW is a new ceramic style with closed kiln firing and is not related to Bara style pottery despite some concurrent finds of fragments at some sites. 
• Eastern Ganga (EG) valley was occupied by the EG Black Ware tradition (BRW, BSW). EGBW developed from indigenous traditions of Black Ware (carbonized layer by plants to give black color) that go back to 5th millenium BCE. 
• NBPW is divided into early and late phases: 1st phase is 6th-3rd century BCE, second is 3rd-1st century BCE. 
• BRW & BSW dispersed across WG valley during late 2nd millenium, replacing Bara-OCP (Ochre Colored) tradition.
• EGBW evolved into NBPW, PGW is not proto-type of NBPW. EGBW uses open kiln firing technique, so different tech than PGW. 
  
• PGW was perhaps Aryans + EGBW (indigenous/native tradition that had spread to the WG/South Rajasthan)
• NBPW originates as mix of PGW closed kiln firing technique but in geography of EGBW. 
• Lot more radiocarbon dating needed to fix relative internal chronology, currently we're guesstimating a bit based on these dates.
• BB Lal's date of 600 BCE for the NBPW phase as Hastinapura is perhaps incorrect, as the coarse pottery found there belongs to late NBPW, not early NBPW. This would also effect the 800 BCE date given for the PGW phase as Hastinapura. 

PGW is apparently distinguished from the Bara‐style pottery (Figure 8). The Bara‐style pottery is composed of pots, bowls and dish‐on‐stands whose proto‐types can be found in the Harappa‐style and Sothi‐Siswal pottery of the Urban Indus period (Uesugi and Dangi

2017). They were fired in an oxidised condition. The painting motifs of this pottery are also derived from the Harappa‐style and Sothi‐Siswal‐style pottery. PGW is comprised of straight‐sided bowls, hemispherical bowls and shallow bowls/dishes which are totally absent in the Bara assemblage. The firing technique in a reduced condition using closed kilns is also an element showing a difference between PGW and the Barastyle pottery. The painting motifs of PGW, which consist of geometric motifs, also exhibit a clear difference from the Bara‐style pottery. Therefore, these two styles of pottery have no stylistic and technological similarities. 

Hence, it seems that the spread of NBPW over the western Ganga Valley and the Ghaggar Valley occurred predominantly during the Late NBPW phase, which can be dated between the fourth/third century BCE and the beginning of the Christian Era.  

In the western Ganga Valley and northern Rajasthan, the black ware industry is identifiable as having an independent phase between the Bara‐OCP phase and the PGW phase and as continuing to the following PGW‐dominant phase (Gaur 1983). Even in the Ghaggar Valley, BRW and BSW are known to be associated with PGW (Figure 9: 1‐19), although there is no independent phase of BRW and BSW in this region. These pieces of evidence imply that the black ware industry and PGW had some relations.  The examinations made above indicate that PGW and BRW/BSW share some common traits in the formal assemblages and have different features in the morphological and technological aspects. The morphological similarty between some of the shallow bowls/dishes of PGW having straight sides (Figure 3: 16 ‐ 18; Figure 5: 17 ‐ 22) and that of BRW/BSW (Figure 9: 7 ‐ 10, 14 ‐ 16, 22, 23, 31, 32) exhibits the interaction between these two types of ceramics and the influence from BRW/BSW to PGW. 

The region of origin of PGW has not been specified, but the dense distribution of PGW sites in the Ghaggar Valley and the cultural sequences in different parts of North India suggest that PGW developed in the Ghaggar Valley. However, it is important to repeat that PGW did not have direct relations with the Bara‐style pottery which was widespread in the preceding period but had connections with the black ware industry in the Ganga Valley. Therefore, the origin of PGW must be searched in its relations with the black ware industry in the east, that is in the connection between the Ghaggar Valley and the Ganga Valley during the second millennium BCE 

NBPW has been known not only from North India but also different parts of South Asia, but the Early phase can be attested only in the eastern Ganga Valley. As discussed in the preceding sections, the eastern Ganga Valley is a region where the black ware tradition developed for several millennia, and NBPW was part of this black ware tradition of this region. The excavations at Rajghat (Narain and Roy 1976) and Prahladpur (Narain and Roy 1968) stratigraphically exhibit the predominance of BSW just before the emergence of NBPW indicating the process of the generation of NBPW. 

The evidence examined in this paper strongly exhibits that PGW continued to the midfirst millennium BCE and had a relationship with NBPW in the eastern Ganga Valley. While further examination must be made to fully understand the relationships between PGW and NBPW, it is evident that a wide area including the Ganga Valley and the Ghaggar Valley formed an interaction system in this period as in the preceding period. During the late first millennium BCE, PGW faded out from North India, and the ʹcoarseʹ variety of NBPW and its associated red ware penetrated the Ghaggar Valley.