Sankarjang Orissa

Orissa

Orissa , officially Odisha since Nov 2011, is a state of India, located on the east coast of India, by the Bay of Bengal. It is the modern name of the ancient nation of Kalinga, which was invaded by the Maurya Emperor Ashoka in 261 BC. The modern state of Orissa was established on 1 April...

, India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

 is an archaeological site near Angul

Angul

Angul may refer to:* Angul, town in India* Angul district, India...

, a former cemetery and settlement with large, splendid worked stones. This site was test excavated by the State Archaeology Department of Orissa after a chance find of 20 long unfinished chipped and ground, lithic bars and axes of basalt, together with human skeletal remains and metallic artifacts, by a shepherd in 1971.

Old-fashioned archaeologists understood ground stone lithics to be typical of the Neolithic Period although they were in production later. The elegant lithics from Sankarjang resemble elaborate ones from eastern Asia and the South Seas. Such lithics played a key role in the definition of R. von Heine-Geldern’s Austronesian culture. The incisor teeth of nine bodies interred in the graves had a "shovel" form which suggests Mongolian affinities. The absolute chronology rests on few 14C dates. Many of the stones give a resonance when struck and judging from the use-wear traces and shape, the stone bars appear to have belonged to finished and unfinished lithophone

Lithophone

A lithophone is a musical instrument consisting of a rock or pieces of rock which are struck to produce musical notes. Notes may be sounded in combination or in succession...

s. Yule and Bemmann tentatively identified the stone bars as part of South Asia's earliest known musical instrument.