Soanian
The Soanian culture is a prehistoric technological culture from the Siwalik Hills in the Indian subcontinent. It is named after the Soan Valley in Pakistan. Soanian sites are found along the Siwalik region in present-day India, Nepal and Pakistan. The Soanian culture has been approximated to have taken place during the Middle Pleistocene period or the mid-Holocene epoch (Northgrippian). Debates still goes on today regarding the exact period occupied by the culture due to artefacts often being found in non-datable surface context. This culture was first discovered and named by the anthropology and archaeology team led by Helmut De Terra and Thomas Thomson Paterson. Soanian artifacts were manufactured on quartzite pebbles, cobbles, and occasionally on boulders, all derived from various fluvial sources on the Siwalik landscape. Soanian assemblages generally comprise varieties of choppers, discoids, scrapers, cores, and numerous flake type tools, all occurring in varying typo-technological frequencies at different sites.
| Geographical range | Indian subcontinent |
|---|---|
| Period | Quaternary |
| Dates | c.774,000–114,000BCE or c.11,700BCE |
| Type site | Siwalik region |
| Major sites | Siwalik Hills |
| The Paleolithic |
|---|
| ↑ Pliocene (before Homo) |
| ↓ Mesolithic |
Excluding some localities in the Soan Valley of Pakistan, the site complex of Guler (Beas Valley) and Toka in India, and the Arjun-3 site in Nepal, Soanian and similar assemblages rarely comprise more than a few dozen artifacts. The emergence of Soanian tools has been tied to the local development of boulder conglomerate formation through prehistoric tectonic processes that created convenient transporting system for raw materials.
Recent researches have been focusing on the technological culture's connection with the Harappan culture that originated near the Indus River.