Water Strategies of Late Prehistoric Settlements in the Semi-Arid and Tropical Climates of Southern India

Presenter:

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Abstract

The author’s archaeological projects are focusing on two dynamic climatic regions of southern part of South Asia. The tropical Western Ghats with high precipitation (3200mm) and Semi-arid Deccan plateau with very low precipitation (400mm) have significant findings to tell us on two different levels of water collection strategies. High-elevated hills of Western Ghats along the western coast cause orographic rain shadow for the Deccan Plateau. This has made the two regions ecologically distinct. Iron Age (1200-300 BCE) societies flourished in both the climatic regions with similar cultural materials and practices with differential levels in establishing the settlements. One of the prominent differences among those settlements owing to landscapes and climate is ‘water’. Our findings demonstrate how possibly the Iron Age communities strategized water in the less and abundantly water available climatic regions. Human-made water pools of indifferent shallow depressions on the slopes of semi-arid granitic hillocks indicate at the collection of runoff water from springs or precipitation. With limited annual precipitation and seasonal water collection locations in the semiarid climate, water could have played its multiple roles as in food and tool processing activities beyond the ritual association. On the absence of tangible evidences for water collection in the Western Ghats, with abundant precipitation and wet landscape, water might have played a different role in the Iron Age societies resorting to ditching or worked on earthen bunding at valley gullies. Contextually appears that greater ecological concerns are probable in the tropical societies than in the arid conditions.