Semthan before the Indo-Greek period

A settlement above the Jhelum

Semthan occupies a raised landscape near Bijbehara in southern Kashmir. Its principal mound is known as Chakdhar or Tsakdar, associated with the Chakradhara of later historical writing. The Jhelum bends around the area, placing the settlement beside an important river corridor. Archaeological remains extend beyond the best-known plateau into a wider group of mounds.

The site matters because its deposits span the interval between Kashmir’s later prehistoric communities and its early historical settlements. This account concerns the phases before the material conventionally described as Indo-Greek. Later coins, religious foundations and medieval stories belong to other parts of Semthan’s history; they should not be used to supply names or beliefs for its earliest inhabitants.

Two published chronologies

The 2021 study by Mohammad Ajmal Shah and Abdul Rashid Lone summarizes six occupation periods. It dates the pre-Northern Black Polished Ware phase to about 700–500 BCE and the following Northern Black Polished Ware phase to about 500–200 BCE. The authors describe a long excavated sequence, with 35 floor levels across the site’s successive periods.

A 2019 environmental and archaeological synthesis uses a different scheme: it compares the earliest phase with the megalithic period around 1500–700 BCE and dates the following phase to about 700–200 BCE. These ranges cannot both be treated as an exact calendar for the same deposits. The timeline records the alternative proposed beginnings. Neither supplies a founding year, month or day.

Floors, beads and pottery in the early deposits

The 1980–81 excavation review, reporting work led by R. S. Bisht, describes successive floors in Period I. Finds included terracotta and bone beads and a copper fragment. Its pottery classification distinguished five fabrics, ranging from slipped red vessels and fine wheel-made red ware to thicker ochre-coloured pottery, grey wares and coarse handmade pieces containing stone grit.

The reported forms included bowls, jars, vases and cooking vessels. Some fine red cooking vessels had soot-marked lower bodies. Incised or wavy decoration occurred on some of the thicker pottery.

For Period II the same review reports red ware associated with Northern Black Polished Ware, repeated floors, a rubble wall and cast copper coins in an upper level. The label Northern Black Polished Ware describes a recognized ceramic category. Its occurrence is not, by itself, a record of which ruler administered the settlement.

Why the earlier report uses different period numbers

The 1978–79 annual review described four periods in the deposits then exposed and stated that excavation had not yet reached natural soil. Its Period I already contained two sherds of Northern Black Polished Ware, alongside black-slipped, red and grey pottery. It also listed iron objects, beads, a bone stylus, copper coins and a seal with a poorly preserved Brahmi legend.

The later report places Northern Black Polished Ware in Period II. The period numbers therefore have to be read with the publication and excavation stage attached. Copying “Period I” from both reports into one list would mix different parts of the sequence. The early report’s objects should not automatically be assigned to the later report’s pre-Northern Black Polished Ware phase.

Crops and a changing economy

The 1980–81 review identifies wheat, barley and rice in the early deposits, together with associated weeds and blue pine. These remains give Semthan a history of food and fuel as well as pottery and metal. They also make the site useful for comparing settlement economies within Kashmir.

The 2019 synthesis examines changes between summer crops and winter cereals across the Valley. It cautions that recovered plant proportions reflect preservation and deposition as well as cultivation. A concentration of charred grain is not a direct measurement of all crops grown, all meals eaten or the area under irrigation.

That study also questions whether thin deposits and changes in wood diversity demonstrate a population collapse. Social reorganization and different forms of settlement remain alternatives. Semthan’s evidence should therefore be used to investigate economic change, without turning a thin layer into a count of people who supposedly disappeared.

What the early sequence can and cannot establish

Floors demonstrate repeated activity; pottery reveals technical choices; plant remains preserve traces of food production and consumption. Together they allow Semthan to be studied as a lived settlement rather than only a place on a royal map. Their value depends on keeping each find connected to its layer and excavation context.

The published annual summaries are selective, and later syntheses do not agree on every date. A fuller account still requires the detailed excavation archive and the underlying botanical catalogue. The later Hellenistic phase is treated separately so that changes in objects, inscriptions and coinage can be considered against this earlier background.