Place · chalcolithic village · India
Inamgaon
The Chalcolithic village at Inamgaon on the Ghod river in Pune district, Maharashtra, excavated by H.D. Sankalia and M.K. Dhavalikar from 1968 to 1983. Inamgaon is the most completely excavated chalcolithic village in the Deccan, with over 150 house plans, granaries, hearths and burial grounds documented across its three cultural phases — Malwa (1600-1400 BCE), Early Jorwe (1400-1000 BCE) and Late Jorwe (1000-700 BCE). The village's water management system — stone bund across the Ghod — is the oldest known artificial irrigation in India. The abandonment c.700 BCE is read as collapse under drying climate; the Late Jorwe sees population reduction and reversion to pastoralism.
- Function
- Archaeology & heritage
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 18.580, 74.530
Connections (2)
- Contemporary capital withBrahmagiri
Brahmagiri and Inamgaon are the two excavations that built the Deccan's prehistoric chronology: Wheeler's trenches at Brahmagiri in 1947 gave the stratigraphic sequence linking neolithic, megalithic and early historic layers, and Inamgaon gave the most completely excavated chalcolithic village in India, with house plans, granaries and a long climatic story ending in abandonment. Between them they turned Deccan prehistory from a collection of finds into a sequence.
- AnalogueBalathal
Balathal in Rajasthan and Inamgaon in Maharashtra are the two best-excavated Chalcolithic villages in India, and both were dug well enough to reconstruct houses, diet, cattle management and burial. Balathal produced the earliest known case of leprosy anywhere; Inamgaon documents a village drying out and being abandoned. Neither is Harappan, and both are contemporary with it or just after.
On these journeys
Sources
Inamgaon excavation reports, Deccan College
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