Dear Bishnupriya Basak,

as far as I can see from your pictures, some features (re picture 4) look like post-holes – this is just a suggestion as it is hard to understand their nature having no data about their scale (diameter and depth), infilling, subsurface features and bedrock characteristics. At the same time, other features (re picture 3) look larger and might belong to other kinds of negative archaeological structures (e.g. storage features).

Hope this can help.

Best,

Diego E. Angelucci

Dear Bishnupriya Basak,

as far as I can see from your pictures, some features (re picture 4) look like post-holes – this is just a suggestion as it is hard to understand their nature having no data about their scale (diameter and depth), infilling, subsurface features and bedrock characteristics. At the same time, other features (re picture 3) look larger and might belong to other kinds of negative archaeological structures (e.g. storage features).

Hope this can help.

Best,

Diego E. Angelucci

Dear Bishnupriya Basak,

your site reminds me on Late Natufian bedrock features from Raqefet cave in Israel. They have been used as mortars, and the finds of iron pestles on your site fits well to a similar interpretation. Please find the article on Raqefet cave and a picture taken from this article attached.

Best regards,

Stefan Wenzel

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259240784_On_floor_level_PPNA_indoor_cupmarks_and_their_Natufian_forerunners

Stefan very interesting feedback. Your picture shows very hard ad rocky surface . But here soils are very porous and rich haematite , limonite etc and soils are highly weathered in nature...Though this is not the area of my expertise , you are better person to judge...

Dear Anoop Kumar,

if there is "soft rock" at the site of Vangchhia, your objection would be very justified. Perhaps Bishnupriya Basak can clarify this point?

Best regards,

Stefan

These are typical sandy or loam soils of highly weathered nature with annual rainfall more than 2000mm, you can make out from the surface features....I have my own doubts , that these holes are of stabilised nature..??

Dear all,

Thanks very much for your replies and interest. Let me again reiterate that this site is being excavated by the Archaeological Survey of India and all information has not been shared with the local people who remain perplexed. Thus as an archaeologist I too am making certain assumptions based on my experience when much information remains inaccessible. I am indeed glad to see that my observations coincide with some of yours'.

Diego (if I may), I am sorry the dimensions of the holes are not available, but you are right, they are not all of the same size. To me some looked like postholes for stilts which may have been used to support enclosures/pens for domesticated animals like fowl. I noticed such structures in the village. ASI, unfortunately is throwing out the infilling. An on-site flotation of this would have preliminarily helped us to know about its nature. I was told that fragments of pottery were found in some of the holes. As for storage--yes I had that in mind too, but again I do not know about the nature of pottery, and whether in such a climate with high precipitaion it is possible for intact jars/pots to survive. What I mean is, some evidence may have been already lost, vitiating our interpretation Again, here an analysis of the infilling would have helped immensely. Samples could have been sent directly to the paleobotany lab.

Stefan, (if I may). Mortars--Such a practice is prevalent in the villages, as informed by my Mizo researcher. Therefore this possibility cannot be ruled out.

Anoop (if I may)--yes the bedrock is 'soft', shale/siltstone/sandstone. These holes were covered by an overlying sediment deposit, so I am told by the local people. The images are of the post-excavation context. Even if the bedrock is soft couldn't some of these holes been used as mortars?

I am sorry, I couldn't follow as to what you meant by 'stabilised nature' of holes?

Thanks very much, all of you. Thanks Stefan for your attachments. THis is not my area of work. I was asked by the locals and a few distinguished citizens of Aizwal to visit the site and give my opinion and also to spread the news in an international network. I am glad I could do that. The people are very much interested in their heritage and quite aggrieved that personnel of a central body like the ASI are not invloving them in their work or incorporating their views.

Dear Bishnupriya Basak,

although there are quite some answers, perhaps a question to raise the answer-potential: Do you have a drawn map of the are, of the plana?

And how did you take out the holes, in natural layers - it looks lie.

If you could make a drawing of the area, with the deep of holes inside, perhaps there could be the possibility to connect them.

Where there things inside? Was the natural layer always of the same consistence? Did you take earth samples from the inside? And is the surrounding material of the holes always the same?

Sorry for those questions, but context matters a lot, i guess..

Best wishes,

Andy

Dear Andy,

Thanks.

Did you read my answer to the comments/observations made earlier? I am not the excavator of the site. Therefore many of your queries, which are mine as well, remain unresolved in the absence of knowledge of evidence.

from the photographs some of them look to be elongated, could these be for timbers that were placed at an angle to provide lateral support rather than a post per se? either for a wall/fence or some kind of rack/frame

The area under discussion is covered with Barail (Oligocene) rocks consisting of hard sandstone/siltstone. This is just for information.

Andy , some very impressive points, look quite pertinent in the context of the question..

Thanks all, for your response.

Yes, Sir (Sujit Dasgupta), I am aware of the geology. I only wish ASI was more attentive, that would have taken care of our queries.

Timothy, from whatever I observed on site that seems a little unlikely.

I think that Stefan's answer suggesting similarities to Natufian bedrock mortars is the most promising working model for developing interpretations about these features. Also as Stefan points out, the presence o iron pestles at this location also is a good basis for the inference that these are mortar features identifying an area of repeated visitation to process plant foods if it relates to a forager or semi-nomadic group of past peoples. Bedrock mortars seem more common in hunter-gatherer systems as horticulturalists or agriculturalist keep heavy grinding equipment at sedentary villages or base camps (sensu Binford's discussion of "site furniture": Binford, Lewis R. 1979. Organization and formation processes: looking at curated technologies. Journal of Anthropological Research 35 (3):255-273). The photographs showing the bottom basins of some of the shallower holes "look" abraded, and you have identified this as an archaeological site, so it seems likely these are human made features rather than solution cavities. Certainly across many parts of western N America bedrock mortars are common as features associated with hunter-gather plant processing (a good literature exists especially for California and the the Great Basin regions) as well as among horticultural/agricultural groups (again many documentented in the US Southwest regions of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, & Colorado). The US SW is an interesting comparison as there also are sockets in bedrock used as portions architectural anchors. The vast majority of these architectural holes are on vertical rock faces (Bandolier National Monument in New Mexico has vast stretches of these in soft volcanoclastic rocks), and along the back walls of sandstone rock shelters with Puebloan architecture. Some of these same shelters occasionally have shallow divets that appear to have served as anchor points for vertical architectural elements (probably "wattle & daub" kinds of dividing walls), but they are rarely more than a few centimeters deep (many are present in the S Utah area near Monument Valley, AZ). Bedrock mortars can be interesting in the archaeology of mobile group to identify areas near plant food exploitation areas that have been repeatedly used across time. Many of these in the US are not necessarily associated with archaeological evidence of base camps and help provide a view of subsistence extraction regions. The great depth of some of the ones you've illustrated - with the man standing in one that is nearly to the top of his this- is interesting. I wonder if anyone has an opinion whether some agriculturalists created deeper bedrock mortar features for processing of greater amounts of plant foods than many foragers? Most of those I've seen in the US Southwest, Texas, Great Basin or California are relatively shallow, are rarely greater than 30 cm in maximum depth. T. L. Jackson (1991. Pounding acorn: women's production as social and economic focus. In: Engendering Archaeology: Women in Prehistory, edited by J. M. Gero & M. W. Conkey, pp. 301-325. Basil Blackwell, Cambridge) notes than Western Mono Native Americans used shallow mortars for initial acorn crushing and then deeper mortars to further pulverize them into flour.

They appear to be bedrock mortar holes use to process nuts. grains. etc. Considering you found a pestle associated with them, that the direction I would lean with the information given.

Dear Rusty and Andy,

Thanks very much for your comments. I think we have reached a consensus on this--that in every probability these were bedrock mortars. But we cannot overlook the possibility of some of these being postholes for stilts for small enclosures, housing domesticated species like fowls, as is the common practice in the near-by village.

However, the groups using them cannot be defined as hunter-gatherers, I think. they can be seen more as communities with mixed subsistence practices. The finding of iron tools, pestles (as informed by locals) points to metalworking, not usually associated with hunter-gatherer mode of subsistence.

Unfortunately I never got an opportunity to discuss with the ASI personnel. Till the report comes out our responses will remain at the level of conjectures.

Bedrock mortars are not exclusive associated with past hunter-gatherer economies. Certainly the presence of iron tools and the ceramics you mentioned indicated these were almost certainly part of the archaeological record of a more sedentary agricultural/animal husbandry reliant groups. You only briefly noted the presence of unspecified structures to pen domesticated animals, mentioning "stilts" as the possible support features. In the "ethnoarchaeological" context of the nearby community that you mention, are enclosures for domesticated animals on "stilts" with floors situated above the natural ground level (not uncommon for fowl)? Or are the pens constructed with ordinary poles that enclose fencing but no raised platforms? Any idea how deep the postholes for such features are excavated? Are these posts in soil/sediment or also excavated into bedrock as in these archaeological examples?

This might add to the understanding.

https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/decoding-vangchhias-ancient-art-of-holding-water-in-rock-amid-mizorams-hills/article26225455.ece