MPSC 2022 Prelims Paper-I · Question 2 of 100

Correct — option (4). The first thing to settle is what the stem is asking, because the English column prints Middle Age where the Marathi column prints मध्याश्म युग, the Middle Stone Age or Mesolithic; nothing medieval is involved. The question therefore covers the Mesolithic and the Copper Age, that is the Chalcolithic, phases of human settlement in Maharashtra, and it asks where the research on them was carried out. All three places named are genuine sites of that research, so the answer is the one that takes them together. Patne, in Jalgaon district, is the site excavated by S. A. Sali whose stratified deposits run from the Middle Palaeolithic through the Upper Palaeolithic into the Mesolithic; its microlithic blade industry and its engraved ostrich eggshell made it the reference site for establishing the antiquity of the microlithic tradition in the Indian subcontinent. Hatkhamba, in Ratnagiri district, is the Konkan site in the same list, one of the Mesolithic localities investigated in Maharashtra alongside Patne and Pachad, and it matters because it shows that the Mesolithic occupation of the state was not confined to the Deccan interior. Inamgaon, in Shirur taluka of Pune district on the Ghod river, supplies the Copper Age half of the stem: it is the most extensively excavated Chalcolithic settlement in western India, dug by Deccan College over some fifteen seasons, and it yielded the house plans, the storage pits, the urn burials and the water channel that carry most of what is known about Jorwe culture village life. Since each option names a real site and the stem asks about both periods at once, option (4) is the answer.

• (1)Patne (Jalgaon) — Patne in Jalgaon district is a real and important site, so this option is not false in what it asserts; it is wrong only because it stops at one name when the stem covers the research as a whole. Patne is the classic Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic sequence of Maharashtra, excavated by S. A. Sali, and it is where the microlithic industry of the region was placed in a stratified order for the first time. What it cannot do is answer the Copper Age half of the question, because Patne is not a Chalcolithic village site of the Inamgaon type. This is the standard difficulty of an all-of-the-above question: the candidate recognises the first familiar name, chooses it and never tests the other two. The correct procedure is the opposite one — assume nothing about the last option until each of the first three has been examined and found either sound or unsound on its own.
• (2)Hatkhamba (Ratnagiri) — Hatkhamba in Ratnagiri district is also a genuine site, and the option is wrong only for being partial. Hatkhamba belongs to the group of Mesolithic localities investigated in Maharashtra, and its interest lies in its position: it is in the Konkan, on the coastal side of the Sahyadri, and it therefore extends the known Mesolithic occupation beyond the river valleys of the Deccan plateau where most of the state's Stone Age sites are found. Candidates reject this option quickly because the name is less familiar than Patne or Inamgaon, and unfamiliarity is treated as evidence of falsehood. It is not. In a question that offers an all-of-the-above row, an unfamiliar but plausible name should raise your estimate of that row rather than lower it, because a setter who wanted a single answer would rarely bury it under two names the candidate already knows.
• (3)Inamgaon (Pune) — Inamgaon in Pune district is the best known of the three and answers the Copper Age half of the stem exactly, but as a single answer it leaves the Mesolithic half of the question unaccounted for. Inamgaon sits on the Ghod, a tributary of the Bhima, in Shirur taluka, and its long excavation by Deccan College produced the fullest picture available of a Jorwe culture settlement — rectangular and round mud houses, large storage jars, a channel and embankment for diverting river water, burials of children in paired urns and of adults in pits, and the terracotta figurines that are usually described as a mother goddess. A candidate who has read about Inamgaon in isolation tends to choose it on recognition. The safeguard is to notice that the stem names two periods, not one, and that no single village site can represent both.

The prehistory of Maharashtra is normally taught as a sequence of four stages, and the value of holding it as a sequence is that questions of this kind are then answered by placing a site rather than by recalling it. The Palaeolithic is represented by handaxe and cleaver assemblages in the gravels of the Godavari, Pravara and Kukadi valleys, of which Nevasa is the classic locality. The Mesolithic, the मध्याश्म युग of the Marathi column, is the phase of small blade tools or microliths, of hunting, fishing and gathering with the first signs of animal domestication, and it is represented by Patne in Jalgaon, by Hatkhamba in Ratnagiri and by other localities such as Pachad. The Chalcolithic or Copper Age is the phase of settled farming villages using copper together with stone blades, painted pottery and mud-walled houses; in Maharashtra it is organised into the Savalda, Malwa and Jorwe phases, with Daimabad on the Pravara and Inamgaon on the Ghod as the great excavated settlements. Maharashtra then has almost no Bronze Age urban phase of the Harappan type, so the Chalcolithic villages run on until the early historic period. What ties the two halves of this question together is that the same institutions and the same generation of archaeologists — Sankalia, Ansari, Dhavalikar, Sali — did the work on both.

MPSC uses Maharashtra prehistory as a place-name question far more often than as a conceptual one, and the reason is practical: the sites are few, they are firmly attached to their districts, and a district name can be tested in one line. The habit the paper rewards is a site-and-district table learnt with a period attached to each entry, so that Patne pulls Jalgaon and Mesolithic together, Inamgaon pulls Pune and Chalcolithic, Daimabad pulls Ahmednagar, Nevasa pulls the Palaeolithic and Bhimbetka, which is outside the state, is not confused with any of them. This particular question adds a translation difficulty that is worth naming, because it changes what the question means: the English column prints Middle Age, which in ordinary usage means the medieval centuries, while the Marathi column prints मध्याश्म युग, the Middle Stone Age. A candidate reading only the English column can waste time hunting for a medieval excavation, and the reading that makes the question answerable comes from the other column. Where the two printed columns of an MPSC paper diverge, the Marathi is the version the Commission drafts first, and it is often the one that discloses the intended sense.

• The English stem's Middle Age renders the Marathi मध्याश्म युग, the Middle Stone Age or Mesolithic, and the Copper Age is the Chalcolithic; both are prehistoric phases and neither is the medieval period.
• Patne, in Jalgaon district, was excavated by S. A. Sali and yielded a stratified sequence from the Middle Palaeolithic through the Upper Palaeolithic to the Mesolithic, including a microlithic blade industry and engraved ostrich eggshell.
• Hatkhamba, in Ratnagiri district, is one of the Mesolithic localities investigated in Maharashtra, and it places Mesolithic occupation in the Konkan rather than only in the Deccan river valleys.
• Inamgaon, on the Ghod river in Shirur taluka of Pune district, is the most extensively excavated Chalcolithic settlement of western India, dug by Deccan College and belonging to the Jorwe culture.
• Inamgaon yielded mud-walled rectangular and round houses, large storage jars, a channel and embankment for diverting river water, urn burials of children and terracotta figurines usually described as a mother goddess.

• Reading the English words Middle Age as the medieval period, when the Marathi column shows the sense intended is the Middle Stone Age or Mesolithic
• Choosing the first familiar site name in a question that offers an all-of-the-above row, without testing the two names that follow it
• Treating an unfamiliar place name as though unfamiliarity were evidence that it is invented, which is how Hatkhamba is usually discarded
• Attaching a site to the wrong period — Patne to the Chalcolithic or Inamgaon to the Mesolithic — when each is the type site of a different phase

Prehistory reaches MPSC papers mainly as location questions — which district holds a named site, which river a settlement stands on, which period a site belongs to — and as matching items joining four sites to four districts or four periods. The Commission favours the Maharashtra sites over the all-India ones because they belong to the state syllabus, so Patne, Hatkhamba, Nevasa, Daimabad, Jorwe and Inamgaon recur far more often than Bhimbetka or Mehrgarh. All-of-the-above rows are common in this block precisely because several sites usually share a period, which lets the setter test whether a candidate knows the whole group rather than its most famous member. Preparation that survives every variant is a compact table of site, district, river and period, with one distinguishing find written beside each entry.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The extensively excavated Chalcolithic settlement of Inamgaon stands on the bank of which river ?

  • (a)Pravara
  • (b)Ghod
  • (c)Krishna
  • (d)Tapi

  Answer(b) Ghod — Inamgaon lies in Shirur taluka of Pune district on the Ghod, a tributary of the Bhima, and its excavation by Deccan College produced the fullest account of Jorwe culture village life. The Pravara is the river of Daimabad and of the Palaeolithic locality at Nevasa, which is why it is the option most often chosen by mistake.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The prehistoric site of Patne, known for its Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic sequence, is situated in which district of Maharashtra ?

  • (a)Ratnagiri
  • (b)Ahmednagar
  • (c)Jalgaon
  • (d)Pune

  Answer(c) Jalgaon — Patne was excavated by S. A. Sali and gave a stratified sequence running from the Middle Palaeolithic through the Upper Palaeolithic into the Mesolithic, with a microlithic blade industry and engraved ostrich eggshell. Ratnagiri is the district of the Mesolithic locality at Hatkhamba, Ahmednagar of Daimabad and Nevasa, and Pune of Inamgaon.