HORNELL THE INDIAN CONCH 65 



Careful examination of the museum collection leads me to believe that shell-bangle 

 factories existed at four centres in the area indicated, the principal being : 



(1) Hampasagra on the Tungabhadra, Bellary District. 



(2) Bastipad on the Hindri River, Kurnul District. 



(3) Maski in the Raichur Doab (Hyderabad State) ; 



and (4) at the great Buddhist ruins of Amaravati in Guntur District. 



Of all these, the last named discovered by Mr. Rea, lately Archaeologist to Govern- 

 ment, is probably by far the most important, as we are better able to date the remains 

 here than anywhere else owing to their association with buildings of known origin. 



The chank fragments discovered at Amaravati are very numerous and 

 important, giving evidence that the chank-bangle industry was carried on in this locality 

 even earlier than the construction of the Buddhist buildings. They consist in the main 

 of large numbers of fragments of working sections of the shell together with a very 

 few pieces of finished and ornamented bangles. Besides these are numerous waste 

 pieces shoulder and oral rejects, showing that the methods of cutting up were identical 

 with those of the present day. The whole of these fragments were found beneath the 

 foundations of buildings which the most competent authorities date circa 200 B.C., 

 hence these bangle fragments are antecedent thereto and must be over 2,100 years old. 

 It may be that these remains constituted part of the town's rubbish heap before the 

 erection of the Buddhist buildings which have survived to the present time and that 

 this rubbish heap was employed in making or raising the ground prior to the putting in 

 of the foundations, or it may be that an old village site, including the waste of a 

 village bangle factory, was selected as a site by the Buddhist architects of Amaravati. 



Besides bangle fragments, a few rudely carved chank finger-rings figure among the 

 remains, together with small discs of J inch diameter sometimes perforated in the centre ; 

 the latter were used in the fashioning of necklaces at Peddamudiyam in Cuddapah, 

 Mr. Rea has found complete necklaces formed of spherical chank beads alternating 

 with chank-discs of the pattern here referred to. The perfectly circular outline of these 

 small discs is remarkable. 



The two fragments of chank bangles found in the Kistna District are probably 

 of approximately the same age as those from Amaravati as they also were associated 

 with Buddhist remains. The finds in all the other districts cannot be placed in time 

 in spite of their frequent association with neolithic weapons and implements. Mr. Bruce 

 Foote has indeed suggested that finely worked serrate and bi serrate chert and agate 

 flakes found in one place in association with bangle fragments were employed by neolithic 

 man to saw through chank-shells and to fashion bangles therefrom. This I cannot accept. 



