Archaeological culture · c. 1200–600 BCE (some give 1300–500 BCE)
Painted Grey Ware culture
An Iron Age culture of the western Ganga plain and the Ghaggar-Hakra valley, named after its fine grey pottery painted with black geometric designs. Its people lived in villages and small towns, kept horses, worked ivory and iron, and grew rice, wheat and barley.
Many scholars connect it with the later Vedic period and the Kuru and Panchala lands; it gave way to the cities of the Mahajanapadas.
See Painted Grey Ware culture on the map in 1200 BCE
- On the map
- 1200–600 BCE
How we know
No writing; known from about 1,500 excavated or surveyed sites and radiocarbon dates; links to the Vedic texts are proposed, not proven.
Sites
- Hastinapur Painted Grey Ware town c. 1100–800 BCE (Lal; 2021–22 dig: from c. 1500 BCE); occupied into medieval times