Iron Age and Early Urbanisation Questions and Answers

Answer: C

The author is primarily concerned with the process of migration of the Vedic people from the Saraswati and Drishadvati valleys to the east.

The passage traces the movement of Aryan settlement from the Punjab and the Saraswati and Drishadvati valleys into Madhyadesha and the Doab, then into eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, with the clearing of forests and the use of iron. Expansion of painted grey ware and black-and-red ware is only the archaeological evidence cited at the end, expansion in Madhyadesha is only one stage, and the division of Vedic culture into Rigvedic and Late Vedic is not the theme, so options A, B and D are narrower or off the point.

Answer: B

The earliest cultural period at Atranjikhera is the Ochre Coloured Pottery (O.C.P.) culture.

Atranjikhera in Etah district of Uttar Pradesh, excavated by R. C. Gaur, shows a sequence that begins with the O.C.P. culture, followed by Black-and-Red ware, then Painted Grey Ware and Northern Black Polished Ware.

Late Harappan is not the first stage there. Black-and-Red ware and Painted Grey Ware are later layers of the same mound, so options A, C and D are wrong.

Answer: B

The layout of ancient Sravasti was crescent shaped.

The city of Sravasti, on the Rapti river in Uttar Pradesh, the capital of Kosala and a centre of the Buddha's teaching, has a crescent-shaped plan, with the river along one side of the ramparts.

Circular, triangular and rectangular layouts are not reported for it. Rectangular plans are found in other early cities, for example Kausambi, so that option is the common wrong guess.

Answer: D

The sites with evidence of iron technology in eastern Uttar Pradesh are Rajghat, Agiabir and Narhan, so the answer is I, III and IV.

Rajghat at Varanasi, Agiabir in Mirzapur and Narhan in Gorakhpur are among the sites that have given early iron objects in the region, from the Early Iron Age levels.

Paisra is known for its Palaeolithic and Neolithic remains and has no iron in the key, so the options that include II are wrong.

Answer: C

The capitals of the Avanti kingdom were Mahishmati and Ujjaini, so the answer is I and III.

Avanti was divided into a northern part with Ujjaini as capital and a southern part with Mahishmati as capital, according to the early Buddhist and Jain lists of the sixteen mahajanapadas.

Vidisha was a city of the region of Dasarna or of Malwa, and Tripuri was the capital of Chedi. They were not capitals of Avanti, so options A, B and D are wrong.

Answer: B

Both statements are correct, but the reason does not explain the assertion, so the answer is (A) and (R) are correct, but (R) is incorrect explanation.

India had two phases of urbanisation, the Harappan or Indus cities of the third millennium BCE, and the early historic cities of the Ganga plain that arose from about the sixth century BCE. The first phase did decline around 1900 BCE.

The decline of the first does not explain the existence of two phases, since the statement of two phases is a matter of counting, not of cause. Options A and D therefore fail, and option C says the reverse of what the key accepts.

Answer: A

The order is Brahmagiri, Arikamedu, Mahabalipuram, Belur, that is II, I, III, IV.

Brahmagiri in Karnataka has megalithic and early historic levels, with an Ashokan edict of the third century BCE nearby. Arikamedu, a port with Roman contacts, belongs to the first centuries BCE and CE. Mahabalipuram is the Pallava site of the seventh and eighth centuries CE, and Belur is a Hoysala temple town of the twelfth century.

The other orders place Belur or Mahabalipuram before the earlier sites.

Answer: C

The order is handmade cord impressed ware, painted Black-and-Red ware, Painted Grey ware, Northern Black Polished ware, that is IV, I, III, II.

The cord impressed ware belongs to the early Neolithic phase of the Ganga plain. The painted Black-and-Red and black slipped wares come in the Chalcolithic and early Iron Age. The Painted Grey ware is of about 1200 to 600 BCE, and the Northern Black Polished ware of about 700 to 200 BCE.

The other orders put the later wares before the earlier ones, so they are wrong.

Answer: A

The key marks option A, a-i, b-ii, c-iii, d-iv.

The keyed pairing gives Kausambi a rampart and moat, Varanasi an embankment, Vaisali double fortifications and Pataliputra none. Kausambi's brick-faced mud rampart with a moat is well known, and the Rajghat site at Varanasi had a clay embankment. The statement for Pataliputra, that no defence remains were found, follows the key and sits uneasily with the timber palisade known there, but the other three options pair the sites differently and are not the keyed answer.

Answer: A

The correct matching is a-iv, b-ii, c-iii, d-i, which is option A.

Hastinapur was excavated by B. B. Lal (iv), Chopani Mando by G. R. Sharma (ii), Langhnaj by H. D. Sankalia (iii), and Piprahwa by K. M. Srivastava (i). Options B, C and D each give a site to the wrong excavator, such as Hastinapur to Srivastava or Piprahwa to Sankalia. Lal's Hastinapur work of the 1950s gave the sequence from Ochre Coloured Ware through Painted Grey Ware, and Sankalia's Langhnaj gave a Mesolithic microlithic culture in Gujarat.