Kalinga Ancient Trade Routes

Golbai Sasan

Strongly Supported Archaeology

Golbai Sasan is a village mound near Chilika lake where people lived for thousands of years. They left behind stone tools for shaping wood, bone fish hooks and burnt grains of rice.

Golbai Sasan is a village mound near Chilika lake. People lived here for thousands of years. Their story starts in the Stone Age, long before Kalinga’s kings and ports [Patra, n.d., p.108].

Diggers found stone tools called adzes, used for shaping wood. They also found a copper fish hook and a bone harpoon. Scholars think the many wood tools may mean people built boats here. But no actual boat has ever turned up [Patra, n.d., p.109].

Diggers also found burnt grains of rice, pulses and millet. Radiocarbon dating shows farming here goes back thousands of years [Kingwell-Banham, 2018a, pp.5-9].

For scholars

The site’s main period of life falls before this atlas’s earliest era. So only its later, Iron Age layer gets a date here. The idea that people built boats here comes from woodworking tools, not from any real boat. One coordinate in an early report was a misprint, pointing out at sea. This entry’s location is fixed using a modern map instead [Patra, n.d., pp.108-109; Kingwell-Banham, 2018a, pp.1-3].

Facts

Site type
Neolithic to Iron Age settlement mound
Coordinates
20.02°, 85.77°
[Patra, n.d.]
  1. Sushanta Kumar Patra, Benudhar Patra. *Archaeology and the Maritime History of Ancient Orissa*. in Orissa Historical Research Journal XLVII. n.d.
Modern name
Golbai Sasan, Khordha district, Odisha
Excavated by
Excavation Branch, Archaeological Survey of India, Bhubaneswar, under B. K. Sinha (1991-93); re-investigated in 2010-11 by R. K. Mohanty and P. P. Joglekar

Key finds

  • Polished stone adzes and celts

    A large number of woodworking adzes. The excavators read them as tools for making boats, which would make Golbai the oldest boat-building place known in Odisha.

    [Patra, n.d., pp. 108-109]
    1. Sushanta Kumar Patra, Benudhar Patra. *Archaeology and the Maritime History of Ancient Orissa*. in Orissa Historical Research Journal XLVII. n.d. , pp. 108-109

  • Bone harpoon and copper fish hook

    Fishing gear made from antler, bone and copper, showing people here lived off the water as well as the land.

    [Patra, n.d., pp. 108-109]
    1. Sushanta Kumar Patra, Benudhar Patra. *Archaeology and the Maritime History of Ancient Orissa*. in Orissa Historical Research Journal XLVII. n.d. , pp. 108-109

  • Charred rice, pulses and millets

    Burnt seeds and plant silica show a farming economy of rice, several pulses and millets, dated directly by radiocarbon.

    [Kingwell-Banham, 2018a, pp. 1, 5-9]
    1. Eleanor Kingwell-Banham, Emma Karoune, Rabindra Kumar Mohanty, Dorian Q. Fuller. *Archaeobotanical Investigations into Golbai Sasan and Gopalpur, Two Neolithic-Chalcolithic Settlements of Odisha*. in Ancient Asia 9. 2018a , pp. 1, 5-9
Scholar notes

The periods listed cover only the Iron Age upper levels, which Kingwell-Banham et al. bracket c. 2500-1500 BP (c. 500 BCE - 500 CE). The site's main occupation, Neolithic to Chalcolithic c. 2300-800 BCE, falls before the earliest period in periods.json - a gap for a human to decide about. OHRJ p. 108 prints 'Long. 88 deg 05' E', which falls in the sea, so only its latitude is used and the longitude is read off a modern map. The boat-building reading is an inference from woodworking adzes, not from any boat.

  1. Sushanta Kumar Patra, Benudhar Patra. *Archaeology and the Maritime History of Ancient Orissa*. in Orissa Historical Research Journal XLVII. n.d. , pp. 108-109 (Excavated by the ASI Excavation Branch, Bhubaneswar, under B. K. Sinha; Neolithic c. 1600 BCE, Chalcolithic c. 1400-900 BCE, Iron Age c. 900-800 BCE, C14 pushing the earliest level to 2300 BCE. 'adzes for wood working gives the positive indication that Golbai was a boat-building centre.')
  2. Eleanor Kingwell-Banham, Emma Karoune, Rabindra Kumar Mohanty, Dorian Q. Fuller. *Archaeobotanical Investigations into Golbai Sasan and Gopalpur, Two Neolithic-Chalcolithic Settlements of Odisha*. in Ancient Asia 9. 2018a , pp. 1-3 (A large stratified mound in the coastal lowlands near Chilika; earliest levels Neolithic, often dated c. 4500-3200 BP. 'The latest levels have been dated to the Iron Age (c.2500 BP-1500 BP).' Macro-remains and phytoliths give rice, pulses and millets, with new AMS radiocarbon dates.)