68 OKHAMANDAL MARINE ZOOLOGY— PART II 



some evidence better than tlie neoliths touching the age of the bangle factory once situated 

 at this place. It is a small headless figure of a sacred bull, of polished earthenware, 

 red externally and black within. Two garlands are indicated around the hump by means 

 of rows of tiny impressed punctures and there can be Kttle doubt that it is of early 

 Brahmanical age. 



(a) Kheralu. A single fragment of a sawn working section of chank shell was found 

 on the surface of the loess at this place. 



Eight sites can clearly be indicated as probable centres of the chank-bangle industry 

 in Gujarat and Kathiawar, namely : — (a) Sigam, Hiran VaUey, Baroda Prant, (6) 

 Kamrej, on the Tapti, (c) Mahuri, on the left bank of the Sabarmati, Baroda State, 

 with (d) AmbavalH, (e) Damnagar, (/) Kodinar, and (g) in and on the alluvium of the 

 Shitranji river above Babapur, all four in Amreli Prant, Kathiawar, also (h) Valabhipur 

 in Vala State, Kathiawar. At all these places working fragments of chank shells have 

 been found. The most important sites appear to have been those at Mahuri in Gujarat 

 and Ambavalli and Valabhipur in Kathiawar. The unworked sections and waste 

 pieces of shells found at these three places are so numerous, and so characteristic in their 

 form of stages in shell-bangle manufacture, that we are perforce compelled to admit 

 these sites as having been in old times locations of important factories, a conclusion 

 to which further weight is given by the discovery at each of these places of fragments 

 of completed bangles, in many instances of highly decorated patterns. At Ambavalli 

 and Valabhipur fragments of finished bangles are especially plentiful ; the ornamentation 

 is well executed and exhibits considerable taste, a high degree of skUl, and undoubtedly 

 the employment of efiective tools of several sorts — saws, driUs, and files. Iron is the only 

 metal suitable for making tools fit for carving the extremely hard substance of chank 

 shells and it is of the greatest interest and significance that at the Ambavalli site 

 associated with the many fragments of worked and unworked chank circlets found there, 

 an iron knife with a tang was discovered which from personal examination I am satisfied 

 may well represent such a chank-saw as is to-day in common use in Bengal chank 

 factories for cutting patterns upon the bangles. 



From a consideration of the details given above a certain number of facts and 

 conclusions of importance emerge, to wit : — 



(a) In all cases the fragments of bangles and of chank shells appear to have been 

 surface finds. In several cases this is definitely stated and in the remainder wherever 

 no statement of horizon is given, the context points to a hke provenance. From this 

 it follows that association with neolithic artifacts in itself has httle value or significance ; 

 both neohths and chank fragments are practically indestructible by atmospheric weather- 

 ing agencies and their association may merely connote the fact that particular surface 

 areas have suffered little or no denudation or change since neolithic times whereby the 

 broken implements and discarded ornaments of a later age have mingled with those 

 of an earlier one. Or it may be the result of the artifacts of different ages having been 



