The Middle Palaeolithic has been viewed in general terms as a time of regional and local diversity in terms of both stone technology and tool types as well as in terms of increasing adaptability in the event of vast reductions in temperature.
In this period the principal tools were varieties of blades, points, borers and scrapes m of flakes.
Till the 1960s the Middle Palaeolithic was not recognized. It was established only in the 1960s and was named as Nevasan after the type-site of Nevasa in Maharashtra. Bhimbetka layer 5 has Middle Palaeolithic occupation. At Chirki near Nevasa one phase of occupation represents a Middle Palaeolithic industry and habitation site.
In the Son Valley, the Middle Palaeolithic lasted from 100,000 BC to 40,000 BC. At Marble Rocks near Jabalpur, the Middle Palaeolithic artefacts of a more refined kind have been unearthed. Budha Pushkar Lake on the eastern margin of the Thar Desert was an ideal region for Middle Palaeolithic people because good stone was found in close proximity to a permanent sweet water source.
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The group of Middle Palaeolithic industries in the southern Thar Desert is named Luni industries by the discoverer V.N. Misra. The industry resembles those of Nevasan and Central Asian. Middle Palaeolithic assemblages the evidence of this industry comes from Hokra, Baridhani, Mogra, Nagri etc. This industry has been dated between 45,000 and 25,000 BC.
Large open-air sites found in the Soan Valley and Potwar Plateau belongs primarily to the Middle Palaeolithic phase. Some of these sites were habitation areas as well as factory sites. The Sanghao cave in the extreme north-west was a place of regular habitation during the Middle Palaeolithic period. At Chancha Baluch belonging to the Rohri industry group, the Middle Palaeolithic phase shows evidence of local development and emergence of the basic stone technology of the Upper Palaeolithic phase.
Other Middle Palaeolithic sites in India include Bhera Ghat, Damoh, Pandava Falls, Chauntra, Wainganga, Hoshangabad, in the vicinity of Bombay, Kondepur, Salvadgi (Mysore), Krishna river valley, Wagaon and Kadamati river valleys in Mewar, Bhandarpur near Orsang valley, Buharbalang valley (Orissa), Aurangabad, Bagalkot (Ghataprabha basin), Attirampakkam, Gudiyam (Tamil Nadu), Gundla -Brahmeshwaram etc.
Technology:
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The Nevasan (as is Middle Palaeolithic age known in peninsular and central India) artefacts were primarily made of crypto- crystalline silica of various kinds such as agate, jasper and chalcedony as distinguished from granular quartzites of Lower Palaeolithic phase.
Such materials were obtained from rivers in the form of pebbles. The flakes vary in shape and are found in round, rectangular, pointed, tortoise type and long parallel-sided blade-flakes. Some composite tools consisting of a ‘break’ or borer- point and two hollow scrapers have also been noticed.
The authors of the Sanghao caves continued to make tools of quartz. Here considerable number of burins has been found. A few pointed flakes used for piercing and boring flakes and quartz fragments worked to a point which can be classified as awls have been found. The Luni group of industries includes convex as well as concavo-convex scrapers, carinated scrapers, points, burins, side choppers, hand-axes, and cleavers and adze blades. In the Rohri Industry the prime tool material is large nodules of chert.