Excavations at Bhimbetka

Bhimbetka is situated 45 kilometres south of Bhopal on Hoshangabad road in the district of Raisen in the state of Madhya Pradesh between the geo-coordinates 24005’N and 76045’E. There were about seven hundred sixty two rock shelters of different periods of which more than four hundred have rock paintings. Perhaps this number is largest in the world for a single complex. The site is scattered over an area of 10x3 kilometres, in northern range of main Vindhyan system. The entire area is covered by dense vegetation.

UNESCO declares the rock paintings of Bhimbetka, a World Heritage Site in 2003. The antiquity of Bhimbetka may be dated to nearly 1,00,000 years. There are more than four hundred rock paintings which belong to different periods. The colors used were vegetable colors. The site was excavated by V S Wakankar of Vikram University, Ujjain; V N Misra of Deccan College Post Graduate and Research Institute, Pune; Sussan Haas, of the Museum fur Volkerkunde, Basle, Switzerland and others during the field seasons 1971-72 to 1976-77. Further the excavations at Bhimbetka were carried out by K D Banerjee, S S Gupta and others of Prehistory Branch of the Archaeological Survey of India during the field season of 1981-82.

The excavations revealed that these rock shelters were occupied by the settlers during lower Palaeolithic period and continued with breaks up to late Medieval period. Lower Palaeolithic Period-The excavation at the site revealed two working floors. Artifacts yielded Acheulian tools, more handaxes than cleavers, pebble tools, flakes and choppers. These tools were made of quartzite and sandstone.