Ochre Coloured Pottery

The material

The ware takes its name from the ochre wash that comes off on the hands, the result of poor firing or of weathering in waterlogged deposits. Vessels are generally coarse, and the sherds are often badly abraded, which has made classification difficult.

Sites are distributed across the upper Ganges-Yamuna Doab and adjoining areas, and are generally small and rural. Dates from thermoluminescence and radiocarbon place the horizon broadly between about 2000 and 1500 BCE.

Copper hoards

OCP has been associated at several sites with the copper hoards of the Doab — caches of harpoons, anthropomorphic figures, antennae swords, celts and rings, found across northern India, sometimes in large numbers.

The association is based on co-occurrence at a handful of excavated sites and is not universally accepted, since many hoards were chance finds without context. If the link holds, it indicates a metalworking tradition of some sophistication in the region during this period.

Significance

The horizon matters because of where it sits. The Indus cities were being abandoned; the Painted Grey Ware settlements associated with the later Vedic period had not yet appeared; and the Doab was becoming the demographic centre of northern India.

Attempts to identify OCP with a specific population — late Harappan refugees moving east, indigenous Doab communities, or incoming Indo-Aryan speakers — have all been made and none is established. The material is too poor and the excavated sample too small to bear the weight the identifications require.