Faunal Depictions at Wyndham 3: a painted rock art site,

Vindhyas.By

Ajay Pratap, Ph.D.Associate Professor,

Department of History,Faculty of Social Sciences,Banaras Hindu University,

Varanasi – 221 005

abstract

• This paper wishes to discuss the animal or faunal figures occurring at Wyndham Falls 3 site, located near Barkacha, in Mirzapur District.

• There are in all about four painted sites which occur downstream from the Wyndham Waterfalls which are a great attraction to local tourists.

• In presenting here the images which we have documented in the course of a two-year project of the ICHR (Indian Council of Social Science Research), we wish to share and discuss our findings with the aim to ascertaining exactly why to such faunal paintings occur here and indeed which species are represented and why?

Wyndham 3: some general comments

• To access this site an hour long trek from the top of the ridge from where the waterfalls cascade or from the Wyndham cascade occurs is needed and this takes us well into and within the Barkacha Forest Reserve.

• The rock art sites which occur here are all along the right bank of the wyndham river which is formed as a result of this cascade and the drainage itself is several miles long.

• However, the Wyndham 3 site occur perhaps two kilometers downstream from the main cascade.• These rock art sites are irregularly distant from each other. Thus while Wyndham 1 and 2 are in close proximity,

Wyndham 3 and 4 are both in close proximity to each other.• The groups 1 and 2 are nearer the waterfalls whereas 3 and 4 are both a kilometer downstream from 1 and 2.• However, all four sites 1, 2, 3 and 4 are shelters well above the level of the flow of the water of the wyndham river.• We have carried out fieldwork here in the dry season and the wet season (or post-monsoonal) season as well and

find that the water-level never breaches the level and location of the shelters to compromise their integrity as habitation shelters (short-term or long term).

• Therefore it is interesting to try to figure-out whether these shelters were hunting-fishing-foraging camps.• An estimate of the age of the paintings at wyndham 3 has been provided by Pike, A. et al. (in press) using the

Uranium-Thorium method of dating at 14000 BP +/- 1000 B.P. • This dating was done on the basis of samples of calcium carbonate taken from the layers where paintings occur.

Thus this gives us the minimum age of these paintings. However, the maximum age of these paintings would be ascertained only by taking the samples from the earliest layer of these calcite deposits.

• In both cases, it is certain that at least some of these paintings are late Pleistocene in age, which is to say that some of these paintings date to the upper palaeolithic phase of the Vindhyas.

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• Chuna Dari 1.The site of Chuna Dari mostly represents marching soldiers which probably depicts a battlescene or feud (See Fig. 1 and 2). The powderysample obtained from this site yielded no absolutedates by means of Uranium series dating.Conventionally the samples should be treated andpreconditioned before the separ ation of U and Ththrough column chemistry. While cleaning thisscanty amount of sample in the laboratory, it wasdiscovered that a fragment of sandstone had beensampled and not a fragment of calcite. Due toweathering and natural flaking, the fragmentappeared as a calcite piece. Therefore whilecleaning all the powdery material (that seemedFigure 1: Chuna Dari 1white at the first instance) of the surface of thissmall stone fragment got washed away. The final product was a very small fragile stone chip,which was not suitable for U-Th dating.Wyndham 3.While from Wyndham 3 one absolute date has beenaccessed so far by one single attempt. The rest ofthe samples from this site are cleaner than othersamples. The detrital contamination in Wyndhamsamples is supposedly very low and it is expectedthat more absolute dates from Wyndham and sitessimilar to this are achievable. The concentrations ofthe detrital part have been measured which yieldedvery low ratios, rendering the samples feasible forFigure 2: Chuna Dari 1~ Sample location ofdating. The absolute date for this site (See Fig. 3)the stone fragmentis 13.0895 ± 1.2348 ka BP. This maximum age hasbeen obtained from the powdery sample (samplename WDRB) procured from the top part of thestick like probable dancing or praying humanfigures. Other samples from Wyndham 3 have alsobeen processed to get absolute dates. More positiveresults from this site might prove to be a milestonein terms of direct rock art dating of Indian rock artdeploying MC-ICPMS and uranium thoriumtechnique.Figure 3: Wyndham 3~ Sample locationand na me - WDRB

THE END

• Thank You!

• Ajay Pratap

• Bhopal