Papers by Prof Giriraj Kumar
Palethnologie
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QUATERNARY GEOCHRONOLOGY, 2023
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Quaternary Geochronology
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Palethnologie
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Palethnologie
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Palethnologie
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<p>List of eggshell specimens from India with associated genes and predicted taxon.</p
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www.mdpi.com/journal/arts
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Man in India, 2008
Chaturbhujnath nala in Chambal valley is the biggest rock art gallery in the world. It is located... more Chaturbhujnath nala in Chambal valley is the biggest rock art gallery in the world. It is located in Tahsil Bhanpura, District Mandsaur in Madhya Pradesh in India. It is rich in rock art representing the pre-Pastoral and early-Pastoral cultural stage. The latter is presented in many forms and styles. While carrying out micro-documentation of rock art here a few months back (Kumar 2007) many rare representations came to light. Some of them of pre-Pastoral cultural stage are unique to Indian rock art, and are being presented in this paper.
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The first direct-dating work of rock art in Hubei Province, China, is reported. A series of over ... more The first direct-dating work of rock art in Hubei Province, China, is reported. A series of over one hundred rock exposures were investigated in the Huai River area near the town of Tongbai, a hilly and wooded granite terrain, using microerosion analysis. Cupules dominate the extensive petroglyph traditions and eight preliminary age estimates obtained from seven of them suggest that the majority of the petroglyphs in the study area are likely to be between 600 and 1500 years old.
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Surveys conducted in June and October 2015 in the Chinese regions of Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Ni... more Surveys conducted in June and October 2015 in the Chinese regions of Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, Guangxi and Henan have focused on the scientific potential of numerous rock art sites to yield forensic and dating evidence. The work was a continuation of the two successful 2014 campaigns in several provinces. It resulted in the first rock art age estimation in Inner Mongolia and demonstrated the Neolithic age of petroglyphs in the Chifeng area, and it also produced several new, comparatively recent dates from Henan Province
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A survey conducted in June and July 2014 in three regions of China, Henan, Ningxia and Jiangsu Pr... more A survey conducted in June and July 2014 in three regions of China, Henan, Ningxia and Jiangsu Provinces, has profitably utilised the country’s wealth of rock surfaces suitable for microerosion calibration, especially soundly dated rock inscriptions. A large team has managed to secure several calibration curves and twenty-seven age estimates from petroglyphs of these regions. While these results offer no more than a preliminary glimpse of the time depth of Chinese rock art, they do provide a first opportunity to test previous archaeological age estimates for some of the best-known Chinese petroglyph complexes, such as those of Helanshan and Jiangjunya. The findings are briefly presented and some of their implications are offered for consideration.
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Rock art of India, by GIRIRAJ KUMAR. 2015. Sharada Publishing House, Delhi; xxviii + 228 pages, 7... more Rock art of India, by GIRIRAJ KUMAR. 2015. Sharada Publishing House, Delhi; xxviii + 228 pages, 75 colour plates, 40 monochrome plates and drawings, appendix, bibliography, index, hardcover, ISBN 978-93-83221-06-6.There have been a number of attempts to summarise the rock art of the subcontinent in a single volume, but the great wealth and still inadequate coverage of India's rock art render the production of an overarching synthesis of this massive corpus rather difficult. Wisely, Kumar has made no attempt to produce such a wideranging compendium, but has instead presented a representative cross-section and summary, situating it in the greater picture of how Indian rock art research needs to relate to that of the rest of the world. He is uniquely qualified to attempt the task of delivering the Indian discipline from its insularity: he is well versed in the rock art research traditions of other world regions, such as China, Australia, Europe and South America, all of which he has visited; and he is the first Indian rock art researcher who has adopted fundamentally scientific principles, especially through his extensive replication work in rock art technology.Consequently this volume differs from previous similar endeavours in various respects, for instance it includes the Rock Art Glossary, an attempt to normalise the terminology of world rock art studies. There is a brief review of the International Federation of Rock Art Organisations (IFRAO), and the IFRAO Code of Ethics is published in full. There is also an introduction and description of the IFRAO Standard Scale, another initiative to standardise rock art studies globally. These elements help considerably in situating the Indian discipline within that of the rest of the world, and their inclusion needs to be applauded.The book's main chapters deal with the history of research, the chronology of the rock art, and the forms found in the main regions. Besides a list of the major concentrations of Indian rock art, the Introduction provides a useful listing of the major tribes, which at 843 000 people account for some 8.2% of the country's overall population. Many of these tribal people are still hunters and foragers (p. 17). The chapter describing the history of rock art studies in India is brief, but soon focuses on the recent developments in introducing scientific formats of investigation. This leads to the book's highlight, the consideration of chronology, antiquity and dating, in Chapter 3. A valuable and accessible account of the history of estimating the age of Indian rock art is provided, from the beginning of the 20th century to the present. Whereas the attribution of various painting styles to the Pleistocene remains controversial, Kumar does provide sound evidence for the Pleistocene antiquity of some of India's petroglyphs, including very early traditions dominated by cupules. This extends the duration of rock art production in this country by a substantial margin, rendering it unmatched in the rest of the world so far. On that score alone, this volume covers a great deal more ground than any other that has attempted to summarise Indian rock art. The project responsible for exploring the earliest petroglyph traditions of India is described in some detail, focusing on the author7 s own excavations at Daraki-Chattan and the microerosion analyses of petroglyphs at several sites in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.The Palaeolithic component, which extends beyond the beginning of the Acheulian at two sites, Auditorium Cave and Daraki-Chattan, leads to the rock art assumed to be of the Mesolithic - although so with limited justification. The subsequent period of cattle domestication is considered next, particularly in respect of central India. Much attention is given to the appearance of zebu cattle (Bos indicus), which many Indian rock art commentators perceive as a chronological marker in the rock art. …
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Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 2020
Abstract The work and results of an exploratory expedition to a series of rock painting sites in ... more Abstract The work and results of an exploratory expedition to a series of rock painting sites in the Heilongjiang Province of NE China are reported. All rock art surveyed occurs as paintings and is considered to be relatively recent. Preliminary age estimates were secured from four of the sites. In two instances, the ages were delimited by the antiquities of their support surfaces. In the two others, four re-precipitated carbonate samples were subjected to uranium-series analyses. The results are discussed in the light of the current debate concerning the need to check U–Th dates obtained from carbonate crusts against the findings of other methods.
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This paper deals with the taxonomy and ultrastructure of isolated ostrich eggshell fragments from... more This paper deals with the taxonomy and ultrastructure of isolated ostrich eggshell fragments from several Late-Pleistocene (Palaeolithic) sites reported by Kumar et al., (1988) and records the discovery of a new locality for these Struthio eggshell fragments near Anjar, Kachchh. The extensive occurrence of these eggshells in over 40 widespread localities in Peninsular India reopens the question of whether these ratite birds represent the last remnants of Struthio lineages known from the Siwalik or whether they were reintroduced into the Indian landmass from East Africa in the Late Pleistocene. This aspect involves precise taxonomic identification based on shell ultrastructure using Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), a feature dealt with in the current year.
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Rock Art Research, 2014
IntroductionDaraki-Chattan is a small, narrow and deep cave in quartzite buttresses of Indragarh ... more IntroductionDaraki-Chattan is a small, narrow and deep cave in quartzite buttresses of Indragarh Hill near Bhanpura, district Mandsaur in Madhya Pradesh, India (Fig. 1). It was discovered by our friend Ramesh Kumar Pancholi in 1993 (Pancholi 1994). The cave is slightly more than 4.0 m wide at the dripline, and 1.4 m at its mouth. From here it continuously narrows down in width, to 34 cm at a depth of 7.4 m, it then becomes slightly wider, up to 40 cm, finally closing at the depth of 8.4 m from its mouth. The cave is maximal 7.4 m in height. It bears more than five hundred cupules on both of its vertical walls. A cupule is a petroglyph of hemispherical shape or its variation, created by percussion technique on a horizontal, inclined or vertical rock surface.The cave overlooks the valley of the river Rewa which opens in front of it into nearly 3-km-wide agricultural fields. The area was a dense forest with rich fauna including tigers even just 50 years back, in the 1960s. The hills an...
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Rock Art Research (IFRAO Journal), 2021
Questions in rock art studies need to be answered scientifically, including how can we use it for... more Questions in rock art studies need to be answered scientifically, including how can we use it for understanding the cognitive, cultural and epistemological development of humans, place rock art in proper chronological order, or effect its conservation and protection. After so many decades of applying the traditional archaeological approach, it has helped us little to answer significant research questions. For answering these questions correctly, we have to change our mindset and adopt a scientific approach. That means our studies should be based on testable propositions. We need to understand the lithology, taphonomy, topography, sedimentology, palaeoclimate of the sites and the epistemology of our ideas about rock art. We also need to be able to effectively discriminate between natural and anthropogenic rock markings and use modern recording methodology, apply scientific dating methods and learn how to conduct rock art replication.
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Papers by Prof Giriraj Kumar