Iron & Urbanization in Ancient Bihar

The history of metallurgy in the Indian subcontinent began during the 2nd millennium BCE. Archaeological sites in India, such as Malhar, Dadupur, Raja Nala Ka Tila and Lahuradewa in present day Uttar Pradesh show iron implements in the period 1800 BC - 1200 BCE. Archaeological excavations in Hyderabad show an Iron Age burial site (The Times of India 2008). Rakesh Tewari (2003) believes that around the beginning of the Indian Iron Age (13th century BCE), iron smelting was widely practiced in India. Such use suggests that the date of the technology's inception may be around the 16th century BCE.1 The beginning of the 1st millennium BCE saw extensive developments in iron metallurgy in India. Technological advancement and mastery of iron metallurgy was achieved during this period of peaceful settlements. One iron working centre in east India has been dated to the first millennium BCE. In Southern India, iron appeared as early as 12th to 11th centuries BCE; these developments were too early for any significant close contact with the northwest of the country. The Indian Upanishads mention metallurgy and the Indian Mauryan period saw advances in metallurgy. As early as 300 BCE, high quality steel was produced in southern India, by what would later be called the crucible technique. In this system, high-purity wrought iron, charcoal, and glass were mixed in crucible and heated until the iron melted and absorbed the carbon. The arrival of iron technology in India is now generally agreed, was a product of indigenous, polycentric growth and its beginning have been pushed back to the closing centuries of the second millennium BCE.2 Although the emergence of the first farming communities in the various regions predates the use of iron, the spread of iron-technology, with considerable chronological variations, in to the historic-cultural regions has been perceived by a group of historians, as an important marker of the transition to full-fledged sedentary agriculture and other constituent elements of the early historical civilization have been derived from it.