Iron Age in India

Northern India

R. Tewari (2003) radiocarbon dated iron artefacts in Uttar Pradesh, including furnaces, tuyeres, and slag between c. 1000 BCE to 1800 BCE. Antiquity of iron in India was pushed back from following the excavations at Malhar, Raja Nala ka Tila, Dadupur and Lauhradewa in Uttar Pradesh from 1996-2001.^[3]

The use of iron and iron working was prevalent in the Central Ganga Plain and the Eastern Vindhyas from the early second millennium BCE.^[4]

The beginning of the use of iron has been traditionally associated with the eastward migration of the later Vedic people, who are also considered as an agency which revolutionised material culture particularly in the Greater Magadhan region.

Scholar Rakesh Tewari states that new finds and their dates suggest the need for a fresh review. According to him, the evidence corroborates the early use of iron in other areas of the country, and attests that India was indeed an independent centre for the development of the working of iron.^[5][6]

However, reviewing the claims of earliest uses of iron during c. 1800-1000 BCE, archaeologist Suraj Bhan noted, "the stratigraphical context and chronology of iron is not beyond doubt" at these sites (namely Malhar, Dadupur, and Lahuradeva) although "there is no doubt" that iron was being used in the Ganges Plains "a few centuries before the rise of urbanization [...] around 600 BCE".^[7]

Southern India

Recently discovered iron age sites in the south of India in Mayiladumparai may be the oldest iron-age sites in India, dated at c. 2172 BCE.^[8] Previously known early iron age sites in South India are Hallur, Karnataka and Adichanallur, Tamil Nadu^[9] at around 1000 BCE.^[10] Mahurjhari near Nagpur was a large bead manufacturing site.^[11]

The earliest reliably dated iron furnace in Tamil Nadu was from the 5th century BCE at Kodumanal, Tamil Nadu.^[12]

Oldest evidence of iron smelting in Tamil Nadu has been suggested to c.3345 BCE^[13] based on radiometric datings between c. 3345 to 2953 BCE of charcoal samples from the site (named Sivagalai), although paddy sample from the intact burial urn containing iron objects returned datings of c. 1155 BCE and c. 1248 BCE.^[14][15] The findings were not published in a scientific journal, and have been questioned by some scholars because of the major disturbances in the stratigraphy of the sites, wherein materials of completely different ages were found nearby and mixed together, and it was the earliest charcoal datings which selectively were announced as being the date of iron usage in disregard of the basic principles of archaeological stratigraphy.^[12] Other scholars have observed, "besides the political theatrics," that "these findings raise many questions" regarding the "dates which span two thousand years [...] as no culture would remain static, materially for two thousand years."^[15] Scarce use of iron was also present in the Middle East as early as c.3000 BCE, but it was not until c.1200 BCE that large-scale iron metallurgy became widespread, replacing use of bronze in weapons and implements, which signified the commencement of the full-fledged Iron Age.^[16]