Consider the following statements with reference to Paleolithic tools : 1. Isampur was a well-known center of stone tool manufacture located in Gulbarga district of Karnataka and was situated along a small seasonal stream known as Kamta Halla. 2. A Paleolithic blade is a flake tool, the length of which is more than twice its width. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
- (a)1 only
- (b)2 only
- (c)Both 1 and 2
- (d)Neither 1 nor 2
Correct — C, Both 1 and 2. Isampur is a real and well-published Acheulian site, and the published record places it exactly where statement 1 places it. Paddayya and his colleagues describe five seasons of excavation between 1997 and 2001 at 'the Lower Palaeolithic (Acheulian) site of Isampur in northern Karnataka', in the Hunsgi valley of Shorapur taluk, Gulbarga District, and they identify it as 'a quarry-cum-workshop site... where all stages in the Acheulian tool manufacturing process at the raw material source (siliceous limestone from the Middle Bhima Series) have been preserved'. A centre of stone tool manufacture is precisely what that is. Statement 2 is the standard definition of a blade in stone-tool studies: a blade is a flake at least twice as long as it is wide, struck from a prepared core, and blade-based industries are what separate the Upper Palaeolithic from the flake industries before it.
- (a)1 only — Drops the definition of a blade, which is the settled one in lithic studies — a flake whose length is at least twice its width.
- (b)2 only — Drops the site. Isampur's location in the Hunsgi valley of what was then Gulbarga district, and its character as a quarry-cum-workshop, are both in the excavation reports.
- (d)Neither 1 nor 2 — Rejects two statements that the published archaeology supports.
Isampur lies in the Hunsgi and Baichbal valleys, an amphitheatre-like basin of about 500 square kilometres enclosed by shale and limestone plateaus, where more than two hundred prehistoric localities from the Acheulian to the early historic period have been mapped since 1965. The site is unusual because the raw material and the workshop are in the same place: Acheulian tool-makers quarried slabs of siliceous limestone from the weathered bedrock and worked them where they lay, so every stage from the raw slab to the finished handaxe survives in one deposit. Preliminary dating by electron spin resonance on two teeth from the site averaged more than 1.2 million years.
Two-statement items that pair a named site with a technical definition are answered separately, one clause at a time. The definition is the safer of the two — twice as long as wide is worth memorising because it also anchors the difference between a flake industry and a blade industry. On the site, one caution belongs on the record: the excavation reports place Isampur at about sixteen and a half degrees north in the north-western corner of the Hunsgi valley and name the Hunsgi nullah, a small left-bank tributary of the Krishna, as the drainage of the basin, but no published source reachable while this card was written names a stream called Kamta Halla. Treat that detail as the examiner's, not as something to certify. The district reference has also moved on: Shorapur taluk, along with Hunsgi, now falls in Yadgir district, created on 10 April 2010 out of Gulbarga, so a present-day map will place Isampur in Yadgir.
- Isampur is a Lower Palaeolithic Acheulian quarry-cum-workshop in the Hunsgi valley, Shorapur taluk, of what was then Gulbarga district, Karnataka.
- The raw material worked there was siliceous limestone from the Middle Bhima Series, quarried at the site itself.
- Excavations ran for five seasons from 1997 to 2001 under K. Paddayya of Deccan College; the site was found in 1983 after the Irrigation Department stripped the silt cover.
- Electron spin resonance dating of two teeth from the site gave an average of more than 1.2 million years.
- A blade, in stone-tool terminology, is a flake at least twice as long as it is wide.
- Reading 'blade' as a metal object; in prehistory it is a category of stone flake defined by proportions.
- Placing Isampur in the district a present-day map shows; the area was in Gulbarga when the site was published and is in Yadgir now.
- Assuming a quarry site and a habitation site are the same thing — Isampur is where tools were made, not primarily where people lived.
As a two-statement item pairing a named excavation with a technical definition, or as a site-to-period matching question.
CDS_GK_2020_I_Q752020Consider the following statements about Stone Age in India: 1. Different periods are identified on the basis of the type and technology of stone tools. 2. There are no regional variations in the type and technology of tools in different periods. 3. Stone Age cultures of different periods evolved uniformly in a neat unilinear fashion all over the sub-continent. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
- (a) 1 only
- (b) 1 and 2 only
- (c) 3 only
- (d) 1, 2 and 3
Answer(a) 1 only
The principle behind this question. Periods in the Indian Stone Age are defined by tool type and technique — which is exactly why a definition such as the blade's length-to-width ratio is examinable at all.
- practice — not a real PYQ
In stone-tool terminology, a blade is best defined as a flake whose length is
- (a)equal to its width
- (b)at least twice its width
- (c)at least five times its width
- (d)less than its width
Answer(b) at least twice its width — the proportion that separates a blade from an ordinary flake.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The Acheulian site of Isampur, known for stone tool manufacture at the raw material source, is in which State?
- (a)Maharashtra
- (b)Madhya Pradesh
- (c)Karnataka
- (d)Tamil Nadu
Answer(c) Karnataka — in the Hunsgi valley, in territory that was part of Gulbarga district and now lies in Yadgir district.