CATEGORY: site DEFINITION: A plateau of northwestern Madhya Pradesh in India which is also the name of a Chalcolithic culture of the early 2nd millennium BC. Important sites include Navdatoli, Nagda, and Kayatha (Ujjain). The characteristic pottery (Malwa ware) is a red-slipped, black painted ware on a red or cream ground in geometric, plant, and animal motifs. There was also black-painted cream-slipped, black-and-red painted, Jorwe, and Lustrous Red wares. The people cultivated crops, kept animals, and made objects of copper and stone.
CATEGORY: site DEFINITION: A site in southern India occupied in the 2nd millennium BC. Ground stone axes, copper flat axes and antenna swords/daggers, and pottery of Malwa type have been found as well as urn burials.
Inamgaon
CATEGORY: site DEFINITION: A site in Pune of west-central India which depicts the 2nd millennium BC Malwa and Jorwe cultures of the northern Deccan. The Malwa phase had large rectangular, wattle-and-daub structures. By late Jorwe times, the structures were mainly small round wattle-and-daub huts. The area provides one of the clearest pictures of the region after the demise of the Indus civilization.
Jorwe
CATEGORY: site DEFINITION: A small Chalcolithic site in southern India, consisting of several mounds and representing a single period material culture in the second half of the 2nd millennium BC. There was a wheel-made red ware painted in black, including distinctive long-spouted vessels. Jorwe had a rich copper tool industry in addition to stone toolmaking and it seems to be related to the Malwa complex further north.
Kayatha
CATEGORY: site DEFINITION: A site with three Chalcolithic cultures on the Malwa plateau of central India. The first dated to the second half of the third millennium BC, was characterized by Kayatha ware of violet-painted brown slip and incised and red-painted buff wares. The second phase had pottery similar to the Banas culture, white painted black-and-red ware, dated to the early 2nd millennium BC. The last phase, of the second quarter of the 2nd millennium, belonged to the Malwa culture. There was also an Iron Age level.
Navdatoli
CATEGORY: site DEFINITION: Important prehistoric site on the Narbada River of central India, made up of four separate mounds, with Lower and Middle Palaeolithic, Chalcolithic, Iron Age, and medieval occupations. The Chalcolithic, dated to the 2nd millennium BC, had four phases with a painted black-and-red ware and black-painted cream slip ware in the first phase, then Jorwe ware, and finally painted Malwa ware. Its rectangular houses were of timber and bamboo, with lime-coated clay or dung floors. Simple copper and microlithic stone industries were employed. Only wheat was recorded from the lowest level, but from the second phase rice was also known. The site was abandoned in the 1st millennium AD. Subsequently the site was abandoned and its role as a trading center was assumed by Maheshwar on the opposite side of the river.
