Archaeologists at the Deccan College Post-Graduate and Research Institute in Pune have unearthed a major trade settlement dating to the Satavahana period that has revealed links with ancient Rome. The excavation has also thrown light on the food habits of people from the Maharashtra region around 2,000 years ago.
The excavation at Kotul village in northern Maharashtra has revealed that people may have eaten meat and also rice, foxtail millet, sawa millet (barnyard millet), black and green gram and horse gram.
Kotul is located in Akole taluka in the northern part of Ahilyanagar district (formerly Ahmednagar). The village is nestled in the Sahyadris at the foothills of Kalsubai, the highest peak in the range, and around other peaks such as Harishchandragad and Ratangad. The name ‘Kotul’ is derived from the shrine of Kotuleshwar, a Lord Shiva temple located in the vicinity of the Mula river.
The archaeologists were led by Pandurang Sabale, professor in the department of archaeology at the Deccan College Post-Graduate and Research Institute. They carried out excavation at the site considered strategically important since it was located on the trade route from the Satavahana period and connected two ancient trade centres of Junnar and Nasik.
The Satavahana dynasty ruled over large swathes of Maharashtra. While the author P.G. Sahasrabuddhe says it was founded by a king named Satavahana, after whom the dynasty was later known, other references claim that the progenitor was Simuka or Shishuka. Their inscriptions are in the Maharashtri Prakrit language, a previous form of Marathi. In his ‘Maharashtra Sanskruti’, Sahasrabuddhe hails the Satavahanas as the first political dynasty from Maharashtra.
The Satavahanas are seen as adherents of the Vedic tradition, but were tolerant of Buddhism and even gave grants to Buddhist stupas. According to historians S.V. Ketkar and V.K. Rajwade, the Satavahanas may have been matrilineal.
Sabale said Kotul was a major trade settlement in the Satavahana era. The village was located in proximity to three ghats or hill passes, and also had access to Naneghat in Pune district, which allowed it access to ports on the Konkan coastline. “It may have been a huge settlement spanning around 1.5 km in length and 0.5 to 0.75 km in breadth,” he added.
Nashik and Junnar were part of ancient trade routes that also connected Kalyan, Ter, Machilipatnam- Vinukonda-Hyderabad, Paithan (Prathisthan, the capital of the Satavahanas), Surat-Bharuch (or Barigaza as it was called then). Located in Dharashiv (formerly Osmanabad) district, Ter, or Tagar as it was called, is among the richest archaeological sites in Maharashtra. It finds a mention in the works of Pliny the Elder and ‘Periplus of the Erythraean Sea’ (a navigation document).
Sabale said Kotul may have also been part of a trade route from the Konkan to Kolhapur, Karad, Shirwal, Lonavala, Junnar, Otur, Kothul, Sinnar, and Nashik. The route is lined with caves like those at Bhaja, which were used for lodging by travellers. The port of Bharuch could be accessed from Nashik.
The excavations at Kotul have revealed shards of Roman amphoras which were usually used for storing wine, pottery and other material, pointing to its trade links with Rome. “This shows that either imported wine was consumed there or was being transported abrics, spices, ivory and artefacts from their region were much sought after in Rome and abroad.
The excavations also revealed pottery, terracotta figurines, well-finished and unfinished terracota balls, terracotta wheels, and terracotta bangle pieces, shell objects, stone objects made of semi-precious stone like carmelian and agate, bone objects, a coin, metal objects and marine shells.
The dig has also revealed interesting details of the food habits of the people from that settlement. The preliminary report of the excavation, which was conducted by Sabale with Gurudas Shete, Satish Naik, Sachin Joshi, Pankaj Goyal, Prateek Chakraborty, Nilesh Jadhav, Shantanu Vaidya, Amit Pendam, Sumit Jadhav, Abhilasha Mishra and Vinay K. in 2021-22, says: “The ancient settlers at Kotul subsisted on starch-rich cereal like rice; millets such as green/yellow/ bristley foxtail millet, kodo millet, little millet and sawa millet, and protein-rich pulses such as black gram, green gram, common/field pea and horse gram.” Besides, seeds of the Indian jujube or ber (‘bor’ in Marathi) have been recovered from the site.
The dig also recovered skeletal remains of animals. “A majority of the skeletal elements belong to cattle/buffalo, and few to goat/sheep. Within the collection of faunal remains, there were also found to be a few skeletal components that belonged to the Equidae family (horses). In addition, bones of domestic pig and dog have been recorded. Very few wild species were noted at the site. Evidence of a couple of wild mammalian species such as Nilgai and Indian hare have also been obtained. There were also skeletal elements of birds, fish and reptiles. Freshwater shells and shell bangles were found, including a partially worked conch shell, possibly used as raw material,” the report added.
“In the excavations, we found more animal bones than pottery This indicates that they had domesticated cattle and milch animals and also reared dogs and horses,” said Sabale. He added that these people had mixed food habits and ate vegetarian and non-vegetarian food, which was secured from hunting and domesticated animals. They also ate green, leafy vegetables. “Even today, the village has a large number of milch animals and cattle and accounts for the highest amount of milk collection in the taluka,” noted Sabale.
“We have excavated a representative portion. If a larger area is excavated, many more artefacts will be revealed,” he added.
From the archaeological point of view, Ahilyanagar district is considered to be vital and has been studied by archeologists and scholars. H.D. Sankaliya, a doyen of Indian archaeology, carried out excavations at Jorwe in Sangamner taluka and discovered a typical chalcolithic culture (1950-51), which is also referred to as the ‘Jorwe culture’. At Newasa, he found continuous cultural stratigraphical sequence (1954-56).
Daimabad, which is located on the banks of the Pravara, has been studied and excavated by archaeologists including Shankarrao Sali, and is known for the recovery of a 45 cm long bronze cart with two bullocks yoked to it, with a man riding the cart in standing position. This was found in a field by a farmer in a mound as part of a larger hoard in 1974.
This was said to date to the Harappan era, but since there was no unanimity on its dating, another excavation was carried out in 1978, and three stages of habitation were discovered from 1900 BC to 1700 BC. In his book, ‘Maharashtracha Itihas: Pragaitighasik Maharashtra-Khand Pahila, Bhag 1’ (The History of Maharashtra: Pre-historic Maharashtra), archaeologist Shantaram Bhalchandra Deo says these excavations revealed the links between Daimabad and the mature Hadappa culture in the Tapi-Godavari basins. Daimabad is said to be the southernmost extent of the Indus Valley civilisation.
B.P Bopardikar in 1954-55 discovered tools, mostly scrapers, at places such as Ghargaon and Palshi in the Mula basin and Sultanpur and Hanga in the Hanga river basin in the district.
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