  Maps showing (1) Geography of the Rigveda with river names and the extent of the Swat and Cemetery H cultures; (2) Archaeological cultures associated with Indo-Iranian migrations (after EIEC). The Andronovo, BMAC, and Yaz cultures have often been associated with Indo-Iranian migrations. The GGC (Swat), Cemetery H, Copper Hoard, and PGW cultures are candidates for cultures associated with Indo-Aryan migrations. | |
| Period | c. 1200–800 BCE |
|---|---|
| Type site | Swat Protohistoric Graveyards Complex |
| History of South Asia |
|---|
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The Gandhara grave culture of present-day Pakistan is known by its "protohistoric graves", which were spread mainly in the middle Swat River valley and named the Swat Protohistoric Graveyards Complex, dated in that region to c. 1200–800 BCE.[1] The Italian Archaeological Mission to Pakistan (MAIP) holds that there are no burials with these features after 800 BCE.[2] More recent studies by Pakistani scholars, such as Muhammad Zahir, consider that these protohistoric graves extended over a much wider geography and continued in existence from the 8th century BCE until the historic period.[3] The core region was in the middle of the Swat River course and expanded to the valleys of Dir, Kunar, Chitral, and Peshawar.[4] Protohistoric graves were present in north, central, and southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province as well as in north-western tribal areas, including Gilgit-Baltistan province, Taxila, and Salt Range in Punjab, Pakistan, along with their presence in Indian Kashmir, Ladakh, and Uttarakhand.[5]
The grave culture has been regarded as a token of the Indo-Aryan migrations but has also been explained by local cultural continuity. Estimates, based on ancient DNA analyses, suggest ancestors of middle Swat valley people mixed with a population coming from the Inner Asian Mountain Corridor, which carried Steppe ancestry, sometime between 1900 and 1500 BCE.[6]
- ^ Olivieri, Luca M., (2019). "The early-historic funerary monuments of Butkara IV. New evidence on a forgotten excavation in outer Gandhara", in: Rivista Degli Studi Orientali, Nuova Serie, Volume XCII, Fasc. 1-2, Sapienza Università di Roma, Pisa-Roma, p. 231: "[T]he Swat Protohistoric Graveyards complex (henceforth: SPG), {was] first published by Chiara Silvi Antonini and Giorgio Stacul (1972). More recent studies and fieldwork, though, have changed the SPG chronologies (c. 1200-800 BCE) demonstrating that there are no SPG features posterior to 800 BCE (Vidale, Micheli and Olivieri 2016; Narasimhan et al. 2019)."
- ^ Olivieri, Luca M., (2019). "The Early-Historic Funerary Monuments of Butkara IV: New Evidence on a Forgotten Excavation in Outer Gandhara", in Rivista Degli Studi Orientali, Nuova Serie, Volume XCII, Fasc. 1-2, Sapienza Universitá di Roma, Instituto Italiano di Studi Orientali, Pisa-Rome, p. 231: "...More recent studies and fieldwork, though, have changed the SPG [Swat Protohistoric Graveyards] chronologies (c. 1200-800 BCE) demonstrating that there are no SPG features posterior to 800 BCE..."
- ^ Zahir, Muhammad, (2022). "The Distribution and Contextualization of Protohistoric and Historic Cemeteries around Singoor Village, Chitral, Pakistan", Journal of Asian Civilizations, Vol. 45, No. 1, June 2022, pp. 1-37.
- ^ Coningham, Robin, and Mark Manuel, (2008). "Kashmir and the Northwest Frontier", Asia, South, in: Encyclopedia of Archaeology 2008, Elsevier, p. 740: "[I]t appears to have emerged in the upper Indus Valley [...] and then spread across the Valleys of Swat, Dir and Chitral, and into the Vale of Peshawar[...]
- ^ Zahir, Muhammad, (2017). "The Geographical Distribution of Gandhara Grave Culture or Protohistoric Cemeteries in Northern and North-Western South Asia", Gandharan Studies, Vol. 10, pp. 1-30.
- ^ Narasimhan, Vagheesh M., et al. (2019). "The formation of human populations in South and Central Asia", in Science 365 (6 September 2019), p. 11: "...we estimate the date of admixture into the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age individuals from the Swat District of northernmost South Asia to be, on average, 26 generations before the date that they lived, corresponding to a 95% confidence interval of ~1900 to 1500 BCE..."