Seeing black and red: Refining chronologies of a complicated pottery type

• Dating “potscapes” instead of cultures provides relevant alternative chronologies. • Legacy radiocarbon data must be assessed before building chronologies. • Rajasthan has the earliest select dates for Ahar white painted black and red ware. • Finds of AWPBRW in Gujarat overlap substantially with Rajasthan. • Madhya Pradesh continued to use the pottery after Rajasthan and Gujarat stopped. Hundreds of sites across northwest India have published mentions of Ahar white painted black and red ware, a pottery type that is often used as a proxy for the Ahar Culture (c. 3000–1700 BCE). Together, these sites comprise a “potscape,” a setting of shared pottery use that transcended geographic and social boundaries. About 65 of these sites have been excavated and 22 sites have produced 283 radiocarbon dates. However, a review of published site reports shows that less than half of these radiocarbon samples were collected from the same context as the pottery and even fewer meet the standards of chronometric hygiene. This paper systematically reviews the dates from these sites to assess the contemporaneity of Ahar white painted black and red ware across three regions: Southeastern Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Madhya Pradesh. It reviews the radiocarbon samples for completeness of publication data, intact nature of contexts, and other factors. The most relevant 74 dates are used to re-assess and refine the accepted chronology for Ahar white painted black and red ware. The results suggest that the chronology of this pottery type varies regionally and that the potscape changed over time.