Mesolithic Stone Technology

In the Mesolithic phase at Bhimbetka the maximum number of caves was occupied by man, showing an appreciable increase in population. The habitation of this culture ranges from 0.2 meter to 1.5 meters in different shelters. Whether the increase in population was due to amelioration in climate or to innovations in technology cannot be stated precisely. In this phase we also find organic remains—animal bones and human burials—and paintings on the walls and ceilings in shelters.

Mesolithic technology, introduced from outside, supplanted the older technology with the passage of time. It consists of microlithic tools made on slender micro blades, which were first detached from cylindrical cores by pressure technique and then blunted on one or more margins. These tools, made on fine-grained rocks like chert and chalcedony, comprise blunted back blades, obliquely truncated blades, points, crescents, triangles and trapezes. By hafting them into bone or wooden handles these tiny tools were utilized to make knives, arrowheads, spearheads and sickles among others.

Other tools found in this phase are scrapers, end scrapers, borers, burins and truncated flakes. The raw material for tools was certainly obtained outside the region as it is not available on Bhimbetka and the neighboring hills. Its nearest source is near Barkhera, some six kilometers south-east.  The Mesolithic people also used querns and rubbers for the preparation of their foods. These objects are found in Mesolithic levels.

Nodules and rubbed cakes of mineral colors, mainly of hematite red, are found from the earliest Mesolithic phase and suggest their use in painting on the walls and probably in ritual contexts. Color nodules, stone querns, rubbers, bone tools and antlers are also found as offerings with the dead, buried within the living areas of the caves. The use of fire, construction of artificial floors of stone slabs and sometimes of walls is notices in the rock shelters. In the later phases the appearance of copper tools and pottery (both painted and unpainted) suggests contact between the Mesolithic people of the shelters and the Chalcolithic people of the plains. In the uppermost layers iron tools, early historic pottery and punch marked coins show the persistence of Mesolithic way of life into early historic times. It was probably increasing contact with agricultural communities which finally brought to an end not only the use of stone technology and the hunting gathering economy but also the practice of cave dwelling among the people of Bhimbetka.

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