If you visit Ballari district, then travelling thousands and thousands of years into the past --- in fact to the Paleolithic and Neolithic ages --- must be high on your itinerary. The Robert Bruce Foote Sanganakallu Archaeological Museum, a unique prehistoric museum of stone age implements, started at Sanganakallu last year.
Most of these collections are stone tools and pottery, white shell bone and steatite beads, iron implements and terracotta objects. The beads of Jwalapuram (AP) are one of the largest collections of late Pleistocene symbolic items in South Asia. The beads recovered from Sanganakallu are also on display here. They provide an insight into the ornamentation from that period, which is made from steatite, quartzite, agate, red-jasper and carnelian.
The terracotta bulls were votive cult objects of worship by households at Sanganakallu during the Neolithic Iron Age period. Remains of arrowheads, spearheads, and images of aggression against wild animals give insight into their hunting capabilities.
How the museum came into existence itself is fascinating. In 1996, Prof. Ravi Korisettar, professor, Department of History and Archaeology, Karnatak University, Dharwad, worked as a guide to Dorian Fuller, now professor of Archaeobotany, University College London, to research on the emergence of agricultural economies in Southern Indian Neolithic by gathering evidence on the nature of agriculture and types of food crops cultivated by the Neolithic people of the region.
During their visit to several sites, they came across Sanganakallu near Ballari, where Prof. Korisettar was shocked to see that it was almost destroyed by large-scale granite quarrying. He immediately got into action to save the site which has a lot of information still waiting to be discovered. He then worked on establishing the museum.
“During our early visits we concentrated on salvaging the evidence, and gradually began to plan a systematic multidisciplinary work. My friends from Cambridge, London, and universities in India and abroad joined hands. The first and foremost thing was to document the site’s archaeological landscape through total station mapping. We then approached the district authorities to intervene and stop the destructive quarrying. During this period, Aravind Srivastava was the Deputy Commissioner and our repeated interactions with him resulted in a positive development,” says Prof. Korisettar.
After putting a stop to quarrying, the DC gave him a place to store Sanganakallu artefacts and start a museum. Prof. Korisettar had collected Palaeolithic and Neolithic stone implements since 1975 from the Krishna valley and its tributaries in Karnataka, which were stored in Deccan College and Karnatak University, Dharwad.
“They were part of my PhD and later research projects undertaken in collaboration with archaeologists in India and abroad. Two major excavation projects were undertaken in Ballari and Kurnool district (Andhra Pradesh) and all these objects from these two projects were brought to the museum for a systematic cataloguing. This was an inspiration from Bruce Foote’s catalogues published by the Madras Government Museum in Chennai,” says Prof. Korisettar.
Robert Bruce Foote, the father of Indian Prehistory, undertook surveys in these regions during 1863 and 1906, and had identified important sites in the reconstruction of the prehistory of India. The museum today hosts thousands of artefacts. It begins from the Palaeolithic age, spans through the Neolithic age and ends with the beginning of the historic age. Thus, giving a classic insight into the life of early man.
“Key objects of this museum include those from Sanganakallu Neolithic complex, the Malaprabha river basin, materials from Kurnool district archaeological project including Jwalapuram. We have around 50,000 artefacts collected from these regions,” says Sanjana Rangan, Research Coordinator, at the museum.
The museum has developed archaeological landscapes. A replica of Sanganakallu hills has been created in the museum and the space outside has landscapes which reflect the Neolithic and Megalithic features at the site. Every exhibit displays information like from where these artefacts came from and their period. Prehistoric study is considered incomplete without knowledge of human evolution. The museum provides complete details about the evolution of humans. Replicas of the early man have been displayed with information.
“Fifteen skull casts are exhibited at the museum along with a short description, and chronologically arranged to depict their place in the evolutionary sequence,” says Sanjana. These skulls are exact replicas of their originals and were gifted to Prof. Korisettar for this museum by Marta Lahr, University of Cambridge, UK, and Sheela Athreya of Texas A and M University, USA.
There are two human fossil remains from India in the list. One is from Hathmora in Narmada valley, which dates to approximately 3,50,000 years ago and the other one is from Jwalapuram where fragments of a child’s skull dating between 15,000 and 20,000 years ago have been found.
SKULL CASTS AT THE MUSEUM
3.2 Million-year-old approx Australopithecus afarensis
2.5 Million-year-old Australopithecus africanus
2.0 Million-year-old Australopithecus sediba
1.9 Million-year-old Homo habilis
1.0 Million-year-old Homo erectus ergaster, Africa
1.0 Million-year-old Homo erectus, Sangran, Indonesia