The Kottapalli Report: Dating Three Periods from Mixed Contexts
An excavation at Kottapalli on the Godavari has produced three occupation periods. Period I contained coarse red ware and microliths; three radiocarbon dates on charcoal from that layer calibrate to 1200–800 BCE, with wide and overlapping ranges. Period II yielded eleven Northern Black Polished Ware sherds, a punch-marked silver coin and a mud-brick wall. All eleven sherds came from a single 4 × 4 m square, inside the fill of a pit that also cut through Period III deposits; the pit fill contained a Satavahana copper coin. Period III produced Russet-coated painted ware, Satavahana coins and a Brahmi inscription on a pillar re-used in a later temple, whose palaeography the epigraphist places in the second century CE. Root and rodent disturbance is recorded across the mound, and no floor levels were preserved in Period II. The excavator's draft report announces 'a Mauryan administrative centre' and dates Period II to 300–200 BCE.
1. Which of the three periods has the most secure chronology, and what single argument supports that choice most strongly?
Read the worked answer
Period III is the most securely dated.
The test is not the number of finds but the independence and convergence of the dating evidence.
- Period III rests on an internally consistent script sequence. A Brahmi inscription can be placed within a well-established palaeographic sequence to within roughly half a century, and the epigraphist's second-century CE date agrees with two other independent classes of evidence from the same deposit: Satavahana coins and Russet-coated painted ware, which belong to the same ceramic horizon.
- Its context is the least disturbed. The inscription is in situ on a re-used pillar, not a stray object in a pit fill.
- Period I is weaker than it looks. Three radiocarbon determinations with overlapping ranges that span 400 years are statistically one poor estimate, not three confirmations; without a short-lived sample (a seed or bone rather than timber charcoal) the range cannot be narrowed, and charcoal can be residual.
- Period II is the weakest. Its key finds come from a pit fill that cuts Period III, so they have no secure stratigraphic home at all - see the next task.
The reasoning to display is that a date is 'secure' when independent methods converge, not when many objects point the same way by association.
2. Should Period II be dated to 300–200 BCE on the NBPW and coin evidence? Assess the evidence item by item.
Read the worked answer
No. The evidence cannot carry that date.
1. Context destroys the association. The eleven sherds lie in the fill of a pit that cuts Period III deposits and contains a Satavahana coin. A pit fill gives a terminus post quem for the fill, not a date for the objects inside it: anything older than the digging of the pit can end up in it. The sherds are therefore residual or derived, and the only date the context supplies is 'not later than the cutting of the pit'.
2. NBPW is a horizon marker, not a calendar. Its currency is broadly sixth to first century BCE, but it continued in use in some regions into the early centuries CE, and eleven small sherds are too small a sample to exclude a regional coarse imitation or a misidentification of slip and fabric.
3. Punch-marked coins run long. They continue in circulation well after the Mauryan period, so a single coin dates nothing by itself, and its die and weight would have to be compared with a published sequence before any claim is made.
4. The mud-brick wall is undated. Without an associated floor or a sealed deposit beneath it, it gives no date.
The defensible statement is: 'NBPW-type sherds and one punch-marked coin occurred residually in a later pit fill; they indicate contact with the early historic ceramic zone but cannot date Period II, which remains undated pending radiocarbon or sealed deposits.'
3. Rewrite the excavator's claim of a 'Mauryan administrative centre' as a conclusion a referee would accept, stating what evidence would change your mind.
Read the worked answer
Acceptable conclusion: 'Kottapalli was occupied from the early Iron Age, and by the early centuries CE had a settlement with ceramic and numismatic links to the wider early historic exchange network of the Deccan. A Mauryan political presence is not demonstrated by the present evidence.'
Why the original claim fails. 'Administrative centre' is an inference from two classes of object that are neither diagnostic of administration nor securely dated. The material correlates of Mauryan administration that archaeologists actually look for are absent from the report: seals and sealings, stamped bricks with a standard ratio, ring wells, a monumental stone or brick structure, and above all a dated inscription or a coin assemblage stratified in a sealed deposit. Eleven sherds in a pit fill are none of these.
How to frame the negative claim properly. Do not say 'there was no Mauryan presence'; say the evidence is insufficient. Absence of evidence is weak here because the excavated area is small and Period II is badly preserved - a negative claim needs an argument that the sampling could have detected the evidence if it existed.
Falsification criteria to state explicitly. The claim would become defensible if: (a) NBPW were found in a sealed floor or deposit sealed by the wall; (b) a Mauryan-period seal, sealing or inscription were recovered in primary context; (c) a programme of radiocarbon dates on short-lived samples bracketed the wall; or (d) systematic sieving of the Period II deposits produced a diagnostic assemblage. Naming these conditions is what converts an assertion into a research conclusion.