Acheulean artefacts are widely known from archaeological complexes in India and commonly comprise handaxes, picks and cleavers. These provide information on human occupation and evolution across India, and have been the subject of much research on stone technology. In some of these sites, artefacts are associated with a Pleistocene volcanic ash layer derived from the Toba caldera in Sumatra, but various studies have derived a wide range of ages from this deposit leading to differing schools of thought as to the age of the tephra. Recent trace element, fission track and mineralogical studies (since 2011), have enabled accurate recognition of each Toba eruptive unit across their fall out, but these approaches continue to be overlooked in some studies where artefacts and Toba tephra co-exist in India. This leads to significant errors in tephra identification, and thus hampers any derived age interpretations. Most recently, this includes the study by Deo et al. (2021) who, in Geological Society Special Publication 515 (Tiwari et al. 2021) report ages for artefacts and tephra from two sites in the Deccan Volcanic Province which have become pivotal in many arguments, namely Morgaon and Bori. Here we address these issues and reiterate the methods for identification of the three main Toba tephra deposits.
Toba tephra deposits in India
At some sites in India, Acheulean stone artefacts are found in close association with tephra deposits, this being first described by Korisettar et al. (1988, 1989) at Bori (see Fig. 1). This association came shortly after the first recognition of Late Pleistocene tephra in India, in the Son Valley (Williams and Royce 1982). The presence of tephra associated with archaeological artefacts has the potential to provide a chronology for their enclosing deposits, but in many cases both the tephra and artefacts are …
Please note that if you are logged into the Lyell Collection and attempt to access content that is outside of your subscription entitlement you will be presented with a new login screen. You have the option to pay to view this content if you choose. Please see the relevant links below for further assistance.