Identify the major Mesolithic sites and describe the typo-technological features with special reference to India.

Major sites

• Sarai Nahar Rai, Mahadaha, and Damdama in the Ganga valley, excavated under G. R. Sharma and later teams at Allahabad, yielded burials, bone tools, and microliths beside oxbow lakes.
• Bagor in Rajasthan, excavated by V. N. Misra, is a dune site with geometric microliths, hearths, and later copper, often cited for incipient animal management.
• Langhnaj in Gujarat, associated with H. D. Sankalia, produced microliths and burials in a sandy estuarine setting.
• Adamgarh and Bhimbetka in the Vindhyas show microlithic floors and a painted-shelter sequence after Acheulian use.
• Birbhanpur in West Bengal, Lekhahia and Morhana Pahar in the Vindhyan belt, and the Teri dune sites of Tamil Nadu extend the map to east and south.
• Patne, Andhra rock shelters, and Sri Lankan Microlithic comparisons sit in the same Holocene hunting world.

Typo-technology

• The signature is the microlith: small blades and bladelets in chert, chalcedony, quartz, and agate, often backed.
• Geometric types include lunates, triangles, and trapezes, which were hafted as composite points, barbs, and knives rather than used as tiny hand tools alone.
• Non-geometric microliths and fluted cores continue from an Upper Paleolithic blade habit in some regions, so the Mesolithic is a technological intensification, not a people arriving from nowhere.
• Bone points, grinding stones, and occasional pottery or copper at late sites such as Bagor show a broad-spectrum toolkit beside the stone.
• Hunting of deer and antelope, fishing and fowling in Ganga oxbows, and shell or dune foraging in the south match that toolkit.

Cultural reading

• Burials with ochre and grave goods at Damdama and Mahadaha show social life, not only waste flakes.
• The Mesolithic is the typo-technological bridge to food production, not yet the Neolithic village.