Kallur is an archaeological site and village located in the

Manvi Manvi is a City in the Raichur district of the Indian state of Karnataka. It is the municipal headquarters of the Manvi taluk. Manvi Police Station stood fifth in the list of top 10 best police station across the country. Manvi is governed by a ...

taluk of

Raichur district Raichur District is an administrative district in the Indian state of Karnataka. It is located in the northeast part of the state and is bounded by Yadgir district in the north, Bijapur and Bagalkot district in the northwest, Koppal district ...

in the state of

Karnataka Karnataka (; ISO: , , also known as Karunāḍu) is a state in the southwestern region of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, with the passage of the States Reorganisation Act. Originally known as Mysore State , it was renamed ''Karnat ...

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

.Amalananda Ghosh (1990), p197 It belongs to Gulbarga division. The site came into prominence with the discovery of antennae swords in the 1930s, which was the first instance of the Copper Hoard culture being discovered in

South India South India, also known as Dakshina Bharata or Peninsular India, consists of the peninsular southern part of India. It encompasses the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Telangana, as well as the union territo ...

. The earliest finding here has been dated to the

Neolithic The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several parts ...

period.

Etymology

The word ''Kallur'' is formed from two

Kannada Kannada (; ಕನ್ನಡ, ), originally romanised Canarese, is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by the people of Karnataka in southwestern India, with minorities in all neighbouring states. It has around 47 million native s ...

words: ''kallu'' which means "stone" and ''ooru'' which means "town". The number of

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained (phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies undergro ...

hillocks that surround Kallur, may have given the place its name. Some of the hillocks that are present here are ''Yammigudda'', ''Pirbannur'', ''Agsargudda'', ''Kampangudda'' and ''Polannagudda''.

Excavation history

The site was first excavated in 1939–40 by M. Khwaja Ahmed of the Archaeological Department of

Hyderabad state Hyderabad State () was a princely state located in the south-central Deccan region of India with its capital at the city of Hyderabad. It is now divided into the present-day state of Telangana, the Kalyana-Karnataka region of Karnataka, and t ...

. It was later explored by

F. Raymond Allchin Frank Raymond Allchin, FBA (9 July 1923 – 4 June 2010) was a British archaeologist and Indologist. He and his wife, Bridget Allchin, formed one of the most influential British partnerships in the post-Independence study of South Asian archaeolo ...

in 1952.F. R. Allchin (1979), p113

Findings

Swords

Villagers living around Kallur discovered three antennaed swords under a boulder on Pirbannur hillock in the 1930s. The swords were made of cast

copper Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu (from la, cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkis ...

with the longest sword being in length and the shortest sword being in length. The antennae of these swords was about 6–7 cm in length. These swords are similar to the ones found in the sites of Copper Hoard culture in North India, like

Fatehgarh Fatehgarh is a cantonment town in Farrukhabad district in the state of Uttar Pradesh, India. It is located on the south bank of the Ganges River. It is the administrative headquarters of Farrukhabad District. Fatehgarh derives its name from a ...

, and hence provide the first instance of such a site being found in South India.M. L. K. Murty (2003), p91

Robert von Heine-Geldern Robert Freiherr von Heine-Geldern (16 July 1885 - 25/26 May 1968), known after 1919 as Robert Heine-Geldern, was a noted Austrian ethnologist, ancient historian, and archaeologist, and a grandnephew of poet Heinrich Heine. Biography Heine-Gelder ...

postulated that these swords were influenced by the

Koban culture The Koban culture (c. 1100 to 400 BC) is a late Bronze Age and Iron Age culture of the northern and central Caucasus. It is preceded by the Colchian culture of the western Caucasus and the Kharachoi culture further east. It is named after the v ...

, but the Indian archaeologist

B. B. Lal Braj Basi Lal (2 May 1921 – 10 September 2022) was an Indian writer and archaeologist. He was the Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) from 1968 to 1972 and has served as Director of the Indian Institute of Advance ...

disagreed.Amalananda Ghosh (1990), p351Malati J. Shendge (2003), p. 169

Paintings

On the ''Yammigudda'' hillock; buffaloes, miniature bulls and a man have been found painted over a rock face. Russet-coated painted ware have also been found here.

Objects

Other objects found here include cores of

chert Chert () is a hard, fine-grained sedimentary rock composed of microcrystalline or cryptocrystalline quartz, the mineral form of silicon dioxide (SiO2). Chert is characteristically of biological origin, but may also occur inorganically as a prec ...

jasper Jasper, an aggregate of microgranular quartz and/or cryptocrystalline chalcedony and other mineral phases,Kostov, R. I. 2010. Review on the mineralogical systematics of jasper and related rocks. – Archaeometry Workshop, 7, 3, 209-213PDF/ref> ...

and

chalcedony Chalcedony ( , or ) is a cryptocrystalline form of silica, composed of very fine intergrowths of quartz and moganite. These are both silica minerals, but they differ in that quartz has a trigonal crystal structure, while moganite is monoclinic. ...

, stone axes, red ware, shell bangles and beads of semi precious stones. Presence of

iron ore Iron ores are rocks and minerals from which metallic iron can be economically extracted. The ores are usually rich in iron oxides and vary in color from dark grey, bright yellow, or deep purple to rusty red. The iron is usually found in the fo ...

and

quartzite Quartzite is a hard, non- foliated metamorphic rock which was originally pure quartz sandstone.Essentials of Geology, 3rd Edition, Stephen Marshak, p 182 Sandstone is converted into quartzite through heating and pressure usually related to tect ...

provide the evidence that

iron smelting Smelting is a process of applying heat to ore, to extract a base metal. It is a form of extractive metallurgy. It is used to extract many metals from their ores, including silver, iron, copper, and other base metals. Smelting uses heat and a ch ...

in a crude form was performed here. Coins of the

Satavahana The Satavahanas (''Sādavāhana'' or ''Sātavāhana'', IAST: ), also referred to as the Andhras in the Puranas, were an ancient Indian dynasty based in the Deccan region. Most modern scholars believe that the Satavahana rule began in the late ...

period have also been found here.

Notes

References

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