Chert stone tools collected from the surface of
unexcavated kitchen midden along Austin Strait (separating
Middle from Northern Great Andaman)
(Z. Cooper)
24. Andamanese archaeology
by George Weber
|
Table of Contents 1. Archaeology in the Andamans 2. What is a "Kitchen Midden"?
3. Active geology and sea level changes 4. The Chauldari kitchen midden 5. The Hava Beel midden and cave 8. Outlook |
1. Archaeology in the Andamans
There are many caves and rock shelters in the Andaman islands but most seem to have been used by bats and birds only, not by humans. However, little archaeological excavation work has been done in the islands so far. The only recent work has been published by Zarine Cooper, 2002, Archaeology and History - early settlements in the Andaman islands, Oxford University Press New Delhi, ISBN 019 565 7926). Another work, though perhaps rather harder to get hold of, is Pratap C. Dutta's The Great Andamanese - Past and Present, Anthropological Survey of India, 1978.
Archaeology during British times was not much more than poking around by amateurs with next to nothing published.
Soon after Indian independence, L. Cipriani was invited by the Indian authorities to conduct anthropological and archaeological research in the Andamans 1949-1954. He was very active in both fields and published on anthropology but unfortunately, as far as archaeology is concerned, he very much stayed in the British tradition, i.e. he did not publish his findings.
Following Cipriani's departure, there was little Indian archaeological work done in the islands and less published until P.C. Dutt started work on the Chauldari midden in the 1970s.
Zarine Cooper took up where P.C. Dutt had left a decade later and again excavated at Chauldari midden (1985-86). She also surveyed and collected surface finds without excavation and noted in 2002 hat
Comprehensive records, based on my surveys, are available for 43 shell midden out of a total of 62 that have been located. There is an average density of two to five midden per sq. km. Among the 43 surveyed sites 27 (63%) lie within or just behind mangrove swamps and are generally situated on rocky platforms. Middens cover an average area of 240 sq. m, while the mean height is 1.5 m.The majority of deposits, regardless of whether they are situated inland or along the coast, occur within 1 km of fresh water springs or streams.
That the Chauldari midden has not only been carefully and professionally excavated by two archaeologists (P.C. Dutta in the 1970s, and Z. Cooper in the mid 1980s) and that both have published their findings make the midden by far the best documented of all Andamanese midden. There has also been a published excavation at a cave, that of Hava Beel on Baratang island which also happens to have a midden not far from its entrance. Other interesting but far more sparsely documented midden are those of Beehive island. "Lapique's midden" which was seen and reported in full use, i.e. inhabited by an Andamanese group in 1894 and has recently been re-discovered and excavated a little.
One S.B. Ota of the Archaeological Survey of India (an organisation strangely inactive in the A&N islands) excavated a midden named Mithakari V (there are 6 other known midden in the area) in the Mithakari valley on South Great Andaman in the mid-1980s but nothing has ever been published and no C14 dates are known.
|
|
Chert stone tools collected from the surface of
unexcavated kitchen midden along Austin Strait (separating
Middle from Northern Great Andaman) |
2. What is a "Kitchen Midden"?
The first human group to arrive in a new land first had to find a protected dry spot with easy access to fresh water and food resources before it could settle down. Next to the village but more or less removed from the living area, a rubbish dump developed (bones from consumed animals, shells, etc). The dump grew, generation after generation, century after century, at a rate that has been estimated very roughly at around 20 cm (8 inches) per century. The little hill soon grows big enough to provide a convenient platform for a small village at its top. With people continuing to produce refuse at the top, the hill keeps growing, but perhaps at a slower rate.
As Z. Cooper has written:
... (kitchen midden) sites in the Andaman archipelago are rich not only in faunal remains but also in pottery and artefacts of bone, stone and shell. These mounds are generally associated with camping grounds that were more or less permanently occupied. Transient or impermanent camps do not survive in the tropical climate of the Bay of Bengal.
How an idealised kitchen midden can develop (the details would of course be different for each midden with its individual circumstances and history).
|
|
One way a kitchen midden can develop in several stages: pink: kitchen midden in active use
1 before human habitation 2 a village near the sea deposits its rubbish (in the ancient Andamans this is usually composed of sea shells, animal bones, broken stone tools, and organic materials. Over the centuries and millennia, the midden grows to substantial size; organic rubbish decomposes but seashells, stones and other hard materials do not 3 much later, the rising sea drives the villagers away and the kitchen midden is submerged 4 much later again, sea levels fall and the kitchen midden rises out of the sea as a small hill on dry land. People return and settle on the convenient hill, starting to deposit their own rubbish round it. The midden grows again. 5 The ancient kitchen midden with its several layers of deposit is abandoned and overgrown by vegetation. Such cycles can be repeated many times over before the midden is discovered and excavated by archaeologists.
|
A large, ancient midden could be a source of pride to the group living on its top and using the land and resources around it. It was a marker of ownership and a link to a long line of past rubbish producers.
|
Consuming your heritage: The eminent Indian archaeologist, Dr. Zarine Cooper, has published a book "Archaeology and History: early settlements in the Andaman Islands" (Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2002, ISBN 019 565 7926) that we can recommend highly to interested readers. In this book, on page 42, Dr. Cooper makes some trenchant remarks on the ways of the local establishment of those pre-tsunami days. Midden are archaeologically important accumulations of prehistoric household refuse, in the Andamans they consist mostly of sea shells and bones, sometimes human bones from ancient burials (which turns local paan eaters into cannibals, yes?). Paan is a vine leaf that is wrapped around betel nut and chewed with lime. A favourite in India but with a special kick in the Andamans. Dr. Cooper writes: It is indeed ironical that while bona fide researchers have to put up with endless bureaucratic hassles in order to obtain permits for undertaking excavations in the Andamans, the administration and the Archaeological Survey of India appear to be oblivious to the large-scale destruction of middens, in and around Port Blair, for the purpose of extracting lime. It is still a puzzle as to whether such criminal negligence is due to apathy or the fact that the authorities are unaware of the potential of middens as valuable repositories of an ancient culture. ... Much of the lime thus obtained constitutes an indispensable ingredient in the making of Paan which is eaten with betel nut. In other words, if one is looking for a midden, one does not have to look far; people are eating them all the time. |
3. Active geology and sea level changes
The number of midden in the Andaman islands (allowing for many ancient submerged midden below sea level or buried beneath jungle) has been estimated in the thousands. Since the islands may well have been populated for tens of thousands of years, these midden represent an archaeological treasure house of the very first order - and one that has yet to be recognized and treated as such, as the box above indicates. The only one truly well-researched, professionally excavated and properly published kitchen midden (of all those many thousands suspected to be scattered all over the Andamans) is that of Chauldari and that is the site we shall describe below in more detail.
The Andaman islands are located in one of the world's most active environments. The climate is hot and humid and can be exceedingly violent. As the islands have just been tragically reminded through a tsunami, they sit on one of the world's more dangerous and active geological fault lines. And the rising and falling of the sea level, slow though it is when measured on the human life span, makes the islands expand or shrink constantly. When rising and falling seas meet complex geological upthrust, it becomes very difficult to establish the shape of the islands over longer periods. For example: sea levels have been rising slowly if irregularly since the end of the pleistocene ice age roughly 10,000 years ago and the rise seems to have accelerated lately. At the end of the ice age, the islands must have been bigger than they are now. But geological upthrust has also been active and so the islands have not shrunk as much as would otherwise have been expected. Upthrust in the island has not been similar everywhere in the islands. For example, in Ritchie's archipelago there are raised fossil beaches (Z. Cooper, p. 163) that have outraced the sea For all these reasons the size and shape the islands had at various times in the past can only be very roughly estimated. (for more on this subject, see Joseph R. Curray, "Tectonics and history of the Andaman Sea region", Journal of Asian Earth Sciences, Volume 25, April 2005, 1:187-232).
|
|
Geological uplift per 1,000 years at four locations in the Andamans (adapted from Z. Cooper, Archaeology and History, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2002) 1 South Point (775 +/-45 years) 2 Wandoor (810 +/-100 years) 3 Chiria Tapu (1,070 +/-100 years 4 Jolly Boys Island (3,800 +/-90 years) |
The following points, at least, are clear and uncontroversial in this context:
Sea level fluctuations over the past 20,000 years are reasonably well-known today:
|
|
Sea level changes during the past 240,000 years from measurements taken at Huon peninsula (Papua-Newguinea), (for source see our chapter 50). The time that could be of relevance to a human presence in the Andamans (that is the time after the Toba eruption) is coloured beige and grey. During the last 240,000 years the sea level has never dropped below 150 m compared with the present. |
|
|
The Andaman and Nicobar Islands and the coastlines around the Andaman sea would be roughly as shown below with the sea level drop as against today given. As the diagram above shows, during the past 250,000 years the sea level has always been less than 150 m lower than it is today. |
|
|
|
|
|
.
4. The Chauldari kitchen midden
The Chauldari kitchen midden is less than 40 km by good road from the centre of Port Blair and is not far from the well-travelled road to a major tourist attraction, the Wandoor National Marine Park. The midden might be worth a side trip for tourists heading for the Marine park.
The midden does not look like much - middens rarely do. But there is quite a bit to see there if you know your chapter 24 from this web-site. Eloi and George Weber and their taxi driver had rather a struggle to find the place in 1997. Even a higher official who turned up with several policemen to investigate what two foreigners and their taxi driver were up to (asking uncomprehending locals about ancient piles of rubbish and wandering all over the place) was at a loss. He did, however, manage to find a local teacher who pointed the growing crowd at a place right across the school that we had passed several times before and not noticed. By all accounts, Chauldari village has been more aware of the midden these days but just to be on the safe side, we enclose a small detail map to help you if you want to give it a try.
|
|
As the map on the far left shows, the Chauldari kitchen midden was ideally placed from a hunter-gatherer point of view. It was on raised rocky ground and had access to two bays /Flat Bay towards the East and Port Mouat Bay towards the West) and - most important! - there is a fresh-water spring 400 m to the north-west of the midden. |
|
|
The Chauldari kitchen-midden, near Port Blair in the
southern Andaman islands: it is one of the very few kitchen
midden to be excavated. It has been been excavated twice: in
the mid-1970s by P. Dutta and in the 1980s by Zarine
Cooper. (Picture by George Weber, 1997)
|
|
|
The surface of the Chauldari kitchen-midden close up - the "shell dump" of the drawing below. (Picture by George Weber, 1997) |
The midden is located where the "border" between Jarawa and Great Andamanese territories is thought to have run when first known direct contact with the European intruders (in the 18th and early 19th centuries) took place. On this ground, it has been speculated that the Chauldari midden could have have been a Jarawa home. Since decorated pottery has been found, it is remains more likely that the owners were Great Andamanese, at least for most of the midden's existence.
Basing his estimate on a relative dating methodology Dutt reaches the conclusion that the oldest levels (those nearest bedrock) are around 2,300 years old. This is in remarkable agreement with the dating based on the absolute C14 method used later by Zarine Cooper.
The Chauldari midden is 4.5 m high on top of the bedrock. The sterile layer (with its top at 2.1 m) indicates a break in occupation of considerable duration. Based on C14 dating, Z. Cooper thinks it likely that the Chauldari midden from its beginning at around 2,300 years, grew for 200 years to half its final size, was then abandoned for 700 years, after which the midden grew again until it was finally abandoned at an unknown date.
C14 dates by Z. Cooper:
|
Depth |
Age |
+/- uncertainty in years |
|
1.1 m |
1,350 years |
100 years |
|
|
The stratification of the Chauldari midden
|
The human bone fragments found came from the distal end of a left humerus, from a portion of ilium and from the head of an ulna. Other small pieces could not be identified. There was no evidence of a deliberate human burial at the site.
Animal bone fragments were also found and came from the Andamanese pig, Sus andamanensis.
Two of the three heavily rusted iron fragments found were rectangular in shape and seem to have been part of objects that could not be identified (the fragment found in the bottom layer weighted 35 g while that from from layer layer 5 was 12 g and the one from the shell dump 2.5 g.
Small quantities of charcoal were found in 7 layers but the quantities were so small that they do not indicate the presence of regular hearths.
|
|
The layering of the midden as shown in the drawing above of by P.C. Dutta's excavation was also visible in the 1980s when Z. Cooper excavated the same midden (from Z. Cooper, Archaeology and History) |
The following tools and shards were discovered in various levels of the Chauldari midden:
|
|
Left:
|
Adzes made of sandstone had both their broad sides
polished. |
|
|
Left: Right: |
|
|
|
Decorated and undecorated potsherds for the Chauldari
midden.. |
|
|
Stone tools found at the
|
|
|
red dot: Hava Beel cave and midden on Baratang island |
Hava Beel is one of the bigger bird caves in the Andaman, with a length of 42 m and a hight of over 9 m. It has long (perhaps for centuries) been known to Malay, Burmese and Chinese bird nest collectors. What prompted a limited archaeological excavation by Z. Cooper were reports that the cave had been a Jarawa encampment until the 1950s. A trench, 2 m wide and 4.4 m deep discovered little: some lenses of organic matter and some limps of tree resin (possibly used for torches by the Andamanese). No pottery, faunal remains, or stone and bone tools were found.
About 100 m from the cave entrance there is a shell midden whose oldest organic material from its basal layer between 2.4 m and 3.5 m is ca. 1,540 years old, as established by radiocarbon dating (Z. Cooper). Other dates from the midden at depths between 0.4 and 3.0 m are all less than 250 years before the present. I also looks as if this midden, just like the one at Chauldari, has a long period during which it was apparently abandoned.
It seems that at Hava Beel the Andamanese preferred the midden, using the cave only rarely if at all. About any possible modus vivendi between visiting bird nest collectors and aborigines living on the midden we know nothing.
|
|
Pottery from the Hava Beel midden. |
|
|
Red dot: the Wot-a-emi area, said by Great Andamanese (first reported by E.H. Man, 1878) to be their "place of origin" "or place of ancestors". It is also also the site of several midden. |
The Pucikwar tribe claimed that the origins of the first Andamanese was at a place called Wot-a-emi and that their tribe received the fire there (see Chapter 23 "Myths and Legends").
Remarkable is that the other Great Andamanese tribes did not each have heir own version of the story. In fact, the Great Andamanese tribes all accepted that the Pucikwar tribe was the oldest and their language was regarded as the "purest". The Pucikwar also identified their place of origin precisely to inquiring researchers during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is disappointing, therefore, to find that the shells from the lowest (oldest) level of the midden have been found by C14 dating to be only. 1,530 years old, around 750 years younger than the lowest levels of the Chauldari midden.
|
|
The Wot-a-emi kitchen midden is being steadily washed away by tidal waters. No "proper" excavation has been carried out on the midden, but the basal layer has been made accessible through the tidal erosion and material for dating (shells) could be removed for dating (Z. Cooper, 1993). |
The Beehive island midden complex is unique in that it is the only site excavated so far to contain human burials.. They were found By Lidio Cipriani in the early 1950s. He left India in 1954 to return to Italy and never published his findings. Even the whereabouts of the five human remains he found is unknown.
|
|
Red dot: The Beehive island midden The midden investigated is one of a complex of midden situated in a mangrove thicket. It is 1.5 m in height, 30 m in length and 25 m in width. During the early stages (the oldest dated sample is dated 1,370 years +/-100 from the present) has been periodically flooded and there are several layers of sterile black mud (Z. Cooper).
|
|
|
Small stone tools (microliths) made of crypto-crystalline
silica |
The tsunami of 26 December 2006 was a major human tragedy. Yet even a catastrophe of such proportions still carries in it the seeds for new hope. One such seed was he fact that mainland India has at last become aware of the general mismanagement that had been allowed to spread among parts of the administration in the remote A&N islands. This chapter gives the example of the edible piles of ancient rubbish (see above) as the most colourful. There are others. The Tsunami has caused many positive changes in the islands and many more can be expected.
As the reconstruction of the devastated islands is making good progress, now is time to call on the rising industrial, financial and scientific (super)power of India to make the necessary effort for a serious long-term archaeological program in the Andaman and Nicobar islands. India has the necessary know-how and manpower. India owes this effort to science.
The Andamanese are not an obscure group of interest only to India. That an essentially stone age people, still with a culture and technology comparable to that of our ancestors tens of thousands of years ago should have survived and be living their stone age lives in today's world of probes to Pluto, supercomputers and nanotechnology, is miraculous. As the many unanswered questions left by this chapter and in this web-site demonstrate, we are very far from knowing who the Andamanese really are and how and when they came to be where and what they are. The Andamanese are special people, but a PEOPLE with much to tell us. India should do the listening and tell the rest of the world what it is being told.
|
[ Go to HOME ] [ Go to ANDAMAN Table of Contents ] [ Go to THE GREAT MIGRATION Table of Contents ] [ Go to APPENDICES Table of Contents ] |
Last change 30 November 2006
