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Home/Anthropology/Mains PYQ/2024/Paper I/Prehistoric Archaeology
UPSC MainsAnthropology Optional Paper I 2024 15 Marks Model Answer Available

Food Production and Domestication at Mehrgarh — 2024 Paper I

Question · 2024 · Paper I · 15 Marks

Describe the evidences of food production and domestication of animals with special reference to Mehrgarh. Throw light on its significance.

Model Answer

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Introduction

Mehrgarh, located on the Kachi Plain near the Bolan Pass in Balochistan, was excavated by the French Archaeological Mission led by Jean-François Jarrige. Its long cultural sequence, conventionally beginning around 7000 BCE, records the transition from hunting and gathering to settled cultivation and pastoralism in north-western South Asia.

Evidence of Food Production

Cultivated crops

Archaeobotanical remains and impressions preserved in mud bricks indicate the cultivation of:

  • six-row and hulled barley;
  • einkorn, emmer and free-threshing wheat;
  • cotton in the later phases.

Barley was the principal early crop. The increasing importance of cereals over time indicates a gradual movement towards dependence on cultivation.

Agricultural and processing tools

Querns, grinding stones, pestles and stone blades were used for harvesting and processing grain. Chaff mixed with mud bricks also indicates threshing and the reuse of agricultural waste.

Storage and permanent settlement

The earliest phase was aceramic, without pottery. However, mud-brick houses show settled life. By about 5500 BCE, compartmented buildings, commonly interpreted as storage structures or granaries, appeared. These indicate planned storage and agricultural surplus.

Development of pottery

The appearance of coarse, chaff-tempered pottery and later wheel-made painted pottery facilitated the cooking and storage of agricultural produce.

Evidence of Animal Domestication

The faunal remains show a gradual change from hunting to herd management:

  • Early inhabitants hunted gazelle, wild cattle and other animals.
  • Over time, domesticated sheep, goats and cattle became increasingly important.
  • The declining proportion of wild animals indicates growing dependence on pastoralism.
  • Changes in animal size and the age–sex pattern of slaughter suggest selective breeding and controlled herd management.
  • Humped cattle later became an important component of the regional agro-pastoral economy.

Thus, cultivation and livestock raising developed together as a mixed subsistence system.

Significance of Mehrgarh

Beginning of food production

Mehrgarh provides the earliest major archaeological sequence of farming and pastoralism in the Indian subcontinent.

Gradual Neolithic transition

It shows that the shift from foraging to food production was not sudden. Hunting continued alongside cultivation and herding for several generations.

Cultural diffusion and local adaptation

Wheat, barley, sheep and goats suggest connections with the Iranian and West Asian Neolithic traditions. However, their adaptation to local ecology and the growing importance of cattle gave the Mehrgarh economy a distinct regional character.

Sedentism and social change

Food production encouraged permanent villages, population growth, long-term kinship cooperation and accumulation of surplus.

Craft specialisation and exchange

Pottery, bead-making, basketry, copper use and ornaments of lapis lazuli, turquoise and marine shell reveal specialised crafts and exchange networks extending from Central Asia to the Arabian Sea.

Foundation of Harappan urbanism

The sequence from settled agriculture to surplus, craft production and regional trade created the economic and social foundations upon which the later Harappan Civilization developed.

Biological-anthropological value

Human burials provide evidence about diet, health and demography. Drilled molar teeth also reveal an early form of dental treatment and specialised technical knowledge.

Conclusion

Mehrgarh demonstrates that domestication was a prolonged process of interaction among human choice, ecology, technology and cultural contact. Its chief significance lies in documenting how an agro-pastoral village economy gradually generated sedentism, surplus, craft specialisation and exchange—the essential foundations of later Indus urbanism.

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UPSC Anthropology Optional 2024 — Paper I

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