in foote's steps

In Foote’s Steps: The History, Significance and RecentArchaeological Investigation of the Billa Surgam Caves inSouthern India

Michael Haslama*, Ravi Korisettarb, Michael Petragliac, Tam Smithd, Ceri Shiptone

and Peter Ditchfieldf

aResearch Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, University of Oxford, UK; bDepartment of History and Archaeology,Karnatak University, Dharwad, India; cResearch Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, University of Oxford, UK; dSchool ofSocial Science, The University of Queensland, Australia; eLeverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies, University of Cambridge,Cambridge, UK; fResearch Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, University of Oxford, UK

The ossiferous Billa Surgam cave complex in southern India has the longest record of archaeological and palaeoenvir-onmental exploration of any Indian cave system, commencing in the first half of the nineteenth century. The remarkablerecord of these investigations, which have paralleled and even driven the understanding of Palaeolithic occupation in thesub-continent, has to date never been comprehensively reviewed and placed in historical context. Here we document andevaluate more than 160 years of work at Billa Surgam, including the initial results of recent archaeological excavations atthe caves. Recognition of the significance of these caves is important for assessing their contribution to the notion of theIndian Upper Palaeolithic, for charting the development of Indian Pleistocene archaeology, and for preservation of thecomplex from current mining threats.

Keywords: Kurnool; Indian Upper Palaeolithic; bone tools; Robert Bruce Foote; Pleistocene archaeology

Introduction

For thegloryof India I hope some onewill be able to carry toa successful issue the exploration of the Kurnool bone caves,and that valuable finds will richly reward his enterprise.1

Inmany parts of theworld a few pivotal archaeological sites

stand as reference points in our understanding of human

occupation. For the later Palaeolithic of India, the Billa

Surgam caves in the Kurnool District of Andhra Pradesh

(N15! 26.153’ E78! 11.122’) are one such locality. The

techniques and interpretations applied to this limestone

complex over more than 160 years of scientific exploration

have both mirrored and in some cases driven the develop-

ment of Indian Palaeolithic archaeology; yet no compre-

hensive and holistic review of the cave sites is available.

Here we provide an historical overviewof discoveries

at the Billa Surgam cave complex, from its initial descrip-

tion in the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. In

doing so we cover the contributions of pioneers such as

Robert Bruce Foote, and critically examine the manner by

which the archaeological finds from Billa Surgam have

been used to construct the notion of the Indian ‘Upper

Palaeolithic’. We place the early cave explorations within

the context of nineteenth-century British and Continental

European debates over the antiquity of humankind. We

also detail the preliminary results of the most recent and

ongoing phase of exploration by a joint Karnatak–

Cambridge–Oxford University team. Our aims in present-

ing this revieware twofold: first, to situate the caveswithin

modern South Asian archaeological debates, and second,

to recognise the historic significance of this locality in the

hope that this will aid in its preservation from current

mining threats.

Geological setting and description

The Billa Surgam, or Billa Surangam caves are approxi-

mately 5 km from the town of Betamcherla, and 1 km

southeast of the village of Kinda Kanama Kottala in

Kurnool District, Andhra Pradesh (Figure 1).2 Named

through a combination of the Telugu billam and the

Sanskrit suranga, both meaning ‘cave’, the complex lies

on the southern edge of a valley that is located on the

eastern side of a low area of the Eastern Ghats.3 The

caves are karst formations within bluish-grey fine-grained

Narji limestone, part of the Cuddapah Basin, which is

itself comprised of sedimentary and igneous rocks of the

Cuddapah and Kurnool Super Groups.4 These include

sandstones, shales, and quartzites, which are visible in

exposures and on tracks leading to the caves, as well as

on the surrounding land surfaces. Limestone for building

South Asian StudiesVol. 26, No.1, March 2010, 1–19

*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

ISSN 0266-6030 print/ISSN 2153-2699 online

© The British Association for South Asian Studies

DOI: 10.1080/02666031003719115

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purposes is actively quarried around both Kottala and

Betamcherla. The area is also used for pastoral activities

and dry-farming agriculture; it is representative of a semi-

arid tropical landscape with an average rainfall of 700mm

per annum and anthropogenically degraded vegetation

dominated by Albizia and Acacia species.5 The modern

wild fauna is limited to genera of intermediate size, such

as Hystrix, Viverra, Lepus, Felis andManis.6

The Betamcherla area has a large number of limestone

caves, shelters and crevices, of which the Billa Surgam

complex is among the largest and most extensively inves-

tigated. The complexcomprises twomain caves and several

1. Location and layout of the Billa Surgam cave complex: (a) Location of Betamcherla; (b) Plan of the Billa Surgam caves from survey datacollected in 2008, including position of excavated trenches (in grey). The inset is redrawn from Lydekker’s map, the first to show the cavecomplex (R. Lydekker, ‘The Fauna of the Karnul Caves’, Palaeontologica Indica, Series X, 4 (1886), 23–58)

2 M. Haslam et al.


smaller cavities opening onto a connected set of deep,

steep-walled gorges. From north to south the caves are

known as Charnel House, Purgatory, Cathedral, the North

and South Chapels, and Chapter House, with intervening

sections named the Transept, GothicArchwayand the Inner

and Outer Courts (Figure 2). Incompletely explored passa-

geways extend into the rock from the interior of several of

these caves, with other dissolution chambers located along

these passages (e.g. the ‘Fairy Chamber’ extending off

Cathedral Cave). All the caves have large entrances relative

to the size of the main chambers, with Charnel House and

Cathedral Caves the largest in the complex.

The Billa Surgam gorge is up to c. 30 m deep, and has

at its base a meandering seasonal watercourse marked at

present by large rolled cobbles and boulders. Occasional

rock arches span the gorge up to 20 m above the base,

remnants of a roof that would have once covered the

whole cave system.7 Upper portions of the gorge walls

are in places rounded and smoothed, marking the likely

location of former sinkholes and indicating that the ori-

ginal roof of the complex has collapsed in stages. Prior to

roof collapse the stream that currently passes through the

complex would have run across the top of the caves, with

simultaneous dissolution of the underlying limestone

deposits. The connected galleries have widened over

time through lateral corrosion.8

The Billa Surgam Caves, 1844–2003

Caves in context: nineteenth-century debates over humanantiquity

European exploration and excavation in the ‘Billa

Soorgum’ caves were first recorded in the early 1840s

by Captain Thomas Newbold of the Madras Army.9

Newbold was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of

London in January 1842,10 and his geological observa-

tions resulted in both publication and minor attention in

England, including a passing mention from Charles

Darwin.11 From the perspective of modern archaeologi-

cal or geological research, Newbold’s two-page report

documenting new discoveries of osseous cave sediments

in southern India appears somewhat unremarkable. At

the time of publication, however, the search for bone

deposits in caves carried a much greater significance: at

2. Billa Surgam caves. (a) The main (northern) entrance to the complex, facing east. The caves extend into the hill to the right; note thelimestone spoil heaps from mining immediately adjacent to the entrance. (b) Cathedral Cave, facing east, showing the ‘High Altar’stalagmite formation. (c) Charnel House Cave, facing east; the ‘Foote Section’drops away at the front of the photo, and light staining onthe cave walls indicates the approximate area of sediment removed by the Footes. (d) The entrance to the smaller Chapter House NorthCave, facing west, with spoil from the 2008 excavation on the slope outside.

South Asian Studies 3


stake were no less than the literal truth of the Christian

Bible and the time-span of human presence on the

earth.12

In 1844 the dominant British position on the antiquity

of humankind was that of William Buckland and a one-

time student of his at Oxford, Charles Lyell. Although

Buckland was one of the leading catastrophists of the

early nineteenth century (expounding the geological

implications of the Biblical flood, for example), and

Lyell the most influential uniformitarian (stressing that

earth history should be explained in terms of currently-

observable processes operating at their current rate), they

concurred in asserting that humanity was created once

the earth had reached its modern state.13 This excluded

the possibility of finding human remains or artefacts

amidst the bones of extinct animals, once the reality of

extinction was admitted following Cuvier’s forceful sum-

mary of the available evidence.14 To suggest otherwise

was to upset the Biblical chronology of the successive

creation of portions of the universe, which placed

humanity in the final stage.

Numerous cave explorations were conducted

throughout both the British Isles and continental

Europe during the first half of the nineteenth century,

and several sites appeared to show the co-occurrence of

humans and extinct animals. The extinctions were equa-

ted with superficial loams and gravels that Buckland

termed the ‘diluvium’ in reference to the Noachian

flood, and which were later renamed ‘drift’ deposits in

reference to the idea that drifting icebergs had released

the gravels during periods of marine submergence.15

However, none of the proposed associations with

human remains were accepted by the leading scientific

authorities of the time, with the complexity of often

re-worked cave sediments forming a mainstay of the

rejections.16 Deposits with clear stratification were

required, and great importance was therefore attached

to undisturbed stalagmite layers that sealed underlying

deposits. Eventually, evidence that humans had in fact co-

existed with and possibly even pre-dated extinct mam-

moth, rhinoceros and other fauna accumulated to an

overwhelming extent in continental Europe.17 At the

time of Newbold’s work, however, he was publishing in

scientific circles that saw cave evidence of extinct fauna

as a marker of human-less time periods, and any excava-

tions of such material were, by definition, of no archae-

ological relevance.

Nineteenth-century exploration: Newbold and the Footes

Newbold brieflydescribed the caves as situated in hills of

‘diamond limestone [. . .] From the roofs of some depend

clusters of stalactites, while the sides and floors are

encrusted with stalagmite, covered with an ammoniacal

and nitrous soil [. . .] brown in colour, and apparently the

result of decomposition of the filth of bats and other

animals that lurk in the recesses’. He also observed that

‘The mouths of the caves are from 46 to 60 ft high; but

diminish before many feet are traversed to semi-circular

channels, or fissures of no great length, which it is neces-

sary to traverse on hands and knees’.18

Newbold excavated in two of the Billa Surgam caves

but his report does not specify which (the individual

caves were unnamed at that point). Given his comments

about the height of the caves, and information later pro-

vided to R. B. Foote,19 it is presumed those excavated

were Charnel House and Cathedral; he comments on the

brecciated sediments, which can still be observed at

Cathedral. Over a period of some three weeks Newbold

excavated portions of the two caves to a depth of 18 ft

without reaching bedrock, and recovered large numbers

of fossilised small animal bones as well as a few frag-

ments of bones and tusks of animals of ‘larger dimen-

sions’ that were sent to Europe. Taken from red mud,

loam, and gypseous (sic) rock the bones were described

as broken but not water-worn, and found in ‘a deposit

analogous in mineral composition, under a similar crust

of stalagmite, to that in which Buckland first discovered

some of the then most remarkable of his Relique’.20

No stone artefacts were reported, but this is unsur-

prising as the work was conducted in the period prior to

the recognition of the first genuine palaeolith in the sub-

continent, and in addition the Biblical implications of

such a find would have been highly contentious.

Nevertheless, the identification of fossilised animals

allowed Newbold to provide the first tentative date for

the caves, suggesting on the basis of deep layers of earth

and breccia beneath a stalagmite crust that the deposits

were likely of ‘the tertiary period, probably the plecocine

division’.21 His positive reference to Buckland indicates

a likely agreement with the latter’s perspective, and,

although not discussed by Newbold, dating the cave to

a period before the earth reached its present state means

that had any archaeological materials been found in the

deposit, they would have served only to demonstrate a

complex depositional history. In his summary to the

Asiatic Society of Bengal Newbold stressed that the

caves held promise of further interesting results.

However, his report apparently had little immediate

effect (as can be seen in Foote’s later work), and

Newbold himself died a few years later in 1850.22

Billa Surgam was apparently not visited for the pur-

poses of scientific exploration for another forty years,

until work resumed in 1883 under Robert Bruce Foote, a

Superintendent of the Geological Survey of India. A true

pioneer of the newdiscipline of Palaeolithic archaeology,

Foote conducted extensive surveys and excavations

across India and corresponded regularly with leading

European prehistorians, helping cement the idea of the

4 M. Haslam et al.


antiquity of humankind across Eurasia.23 It was Foote

who recognised the first Palaeolithic stone artefact in

India, at Palavaram southwest of Madras (Chennai) in

May 1863.24

At the insistence of the well-known naturalist

Thomas Henry Huxley (then President of the United

Kingdom’s Royal Society and often called ‘Darwin’s bull-

dog’ for his early defence of natural selection), Foote was

sent to locate the Billa Surgam caves byM. E. Grant Duff,

the Governor of Madras.25HowHuxley became aware of

the caves is not clear. Foote himself was unaware of

Newbold’s publication until after his first field season,26

although the report to the Asiatic Society did receive

some readership outside India.27 In any case, by at least

late 1882 Huxley and Duff were in correspondence to

have someone perform further work. Duff repeatedly

suggested John Lubbock (author of the seminal 1865

work, Prehistoric Times) as a potential candidate, com-

menting to Huxley ‘I wish Lubbock were now here what

a chance for him’.28 Ultimately Foote was chosen, and

began his explorations in late 1883.29

The intellectual conditions were vastly changed from

Newbold’s time, with the acceptance of humanity’s deep

antiquity and the evolution of species firmly resolved in

the intervening years.30 Foote’s work was therefore

decidedly archaeological, and the presence of extinct

species was no longer a barrier to potential reconstruc-

tion of concurrent human occupations. It was probably

Foote who named the individual caves and their immedi-

ate vicinity after elements of monastic or cathedral

ranges,31 although it is only in his second report on the

excavations that the names are introduced. He diligently

recorded details of the complex, and it must be his infor-

mation or plans that form the basis of the first published

map, by Lydekker (see Figure 1).32 In total, Foote over-

saw three excavation seasons at the caves, the latter two

seasons being directed in the field by his son Henry, a

Lieutenant in the Royal Artillery.33 Collectively these

projects removed significant amounts of sediment from

the largest caves at Billa Surgam, dwarfing in scale any

previous or subsequent work, and the reported findings

are therefore important for our understanding of current

interpretations relating to human presence and activities

at the locality.

Robert Bruce Foote’s first field season was conducted

in late 1883 over a period of some weeks, and concen-

trated on what he termed at the time the ‘northern cave’,

now known as Charnel House. The larger ‘southern cave’

(Cathedral) was occupied by at least 18 immense wild

cliff-bee nests, with the bees reported to be ‘of very

unreliable temper’ and local villagers and Foote himself

were quite fearful of the potentially deadly effect of their

large swarms. Although Foote was able to have local

honey-gatherers remove the nests the bees remained,

and therefore no excavation in Cathedral Cave was

undertaken in the first season. Foote candidly suggests

that ‘the only way to get rid of them will be to blow them

up with powder’.34 There is no evidence that such

extreme measures were ever taken, and the bees and

their nests remain in Cathedral Cave to this day.

The necessity of daylight for section observation dic-

tated that Foote begin with the southern half of the bee-

less Charnel House, with Newbold’s excavation report-

edly having been ‘just a little to the west’ in the same

cave. Foote describes the cave at the start of his work as

‘70 to 80 feet high and 32 feet wide at its mouth, [decreas-

ing] in height to 4 feet, 86 feet from the mouth. Its

extreme end is formed by a small passage, too narrow

and too low to be followed up by an adult’.35 The cave

floor sloped down westward, away from the narrow east-

erly passage. This passage is recorded as having a ‘stream

which flowed out of this gallery in wet seasons, and

which formed the several beds found in the upper [i.e.

eastern] end of the cave’.36 Foote attributes the earth in

the cave to having washed in from this source.37 The

surface consisted of a loose blackish-grey soil composed

largely of bird, bat and other animal droppings.

Foote’s report was published in the Records of theGeological Survey of India with a copy sent prior to pub-

lication to T. H. Huxley in England.38 One of Foote’s

primary aims appears to have been locating the stalag-

mite floor reported by Newbold, but in this task he was

unsuccessful. Instead, he first removed the dark organic-

rich topsoil layer, which was up to four feet thick (at the

eastern end of the cave). This soil contained broken

shells, pottery, some charred wood, and numerous small

bones likely resulting from activities of predaceous birds

(see Table 1 for Foote’s description of the Charnel House

deposits). Beneath this layer Foote uncovered a series of

occasionally stratified red earth layers interspersed with

limestone roof-fall to a depth of 15 feet, containing some

large bones, many small ones, and no stone or bone

artefacts.

At the interface of the dark topsoil and the underlying

loamy red clays, 21 ft west of the eastern passage and

near the north cave wall, lay a small number of fragmen-

ted and unmineralised human bones.39 These remains

included ‘fragments of a very thick calvarium (too bro-

ken to piece together successfully), fragments of the

mandible [including teeth] and one or two vertebrae,

ribs and parts of various limb bones’.40 Foote refers

their presence in the cave to carnivore activity rather

than deliberate burial.41 Their fragmentary state was a

result of impact from limestone roof-fall combined with

the actions of excavators – ‘being very brittle [the bones]

suffered a good deal more while being dug out’.42 The

present location of these bones is unknown (see below).

Foote did not reach bedrock in the first season at the

Charnel House site, and his summary is that this initial

exploration was ‘not very successful’.43



In December of 1883 Robert Bruce Foote was

recalled to geological duties, and late in that month

Duff wrote again to Huxley suggesting that pending the

approval of the Indian Government the best arrangement

would be for Henry Foote to take over the work at Billa

Surgam.44 At the same time Duff noted that the elder

Foote was ‘very much vexed’ to have to leave the excava-

tions to attend the coalfields at Singareni, as ‘he was just

getting into the spirit of the thing’. Henry had spent some

weeks with his father at the caves during the first excava-

tion season, and despite being only nineteen years of age

he was given control as requested, with Duff playing a

guiding role in securing Henry’s temporary attachment to

the Geological Survey for this purpose.45 The younger

Foote supervised two seasons of work at Billa Surgam,

from March to May 1884, and from December 1884 to

the end of May 1885.46

Henry Foote began work at Billa Surgam by clearing

out the remaining portions of the southern half as well as

the entire northern half of Charnel House Cave down to

bedrock, including excavation of the passage at its nar-

row eastern end. At its deepest part, towards the front of

the cave, Henry Foote removed a total of 35 ft 6 in. of

sediment as measured form the original cave floor level.

At the close of his two seasons’work only a small portion

of intact sediment remained at the western entrance to the

cave, although this is not mentioned in Foote’s published

reports and there is a possibility that some of the material

still present at the western entrance today is formed from

the spoil heaps of the 1880s excavations. The narrow

eastern passage was emptied and a connected small

chamber found further to the east was also excavated to

a depth of 58 ft 6 in., although the sediments for at least

the lower thirty feet of this were sterile.

Discovery in Charnel House at depths of 15 and 16 ft

of ‘a well-made bone gouge and two pieces of [cut] stag-

horn’ were sufficient for Foote to declare that ‘The exis-

tence of man at a low stage of civilisation was ascertained

beyond fear of contradiction’, a verdict considered

further below.47 The greatest concentration of bones at

the site were found in or close to the mouth of the eastern

passage, and in Foote’s judgement were washed in from

the above plateau above during wet seasons, although

none of the bones appeared to have been greatly rolled.

He notes that sediments in the front (western) portion of

the cave were formed by the action of the main stream

through the gorge, and that these deposits are ‘remark-

able for their poverty in fossil remains’.48 There are

indications in Foote’s reports that the excavation was

conducted using a grid system, which lends credibility

to the suggestion that spatially patterned deposition was

recognised during the excavation.49

The younger Foote conducted excavations in

Purgatory Cave, mid-way between the two largest Billa

Bed Description Thickness Finds

A1* Surface (bats’dung) bed 3’- 4’ Layer thickest at eastern (innermost) end of cave.Broken pottery, charred wood, owl pellets.Fragmentary human remains at the interface ofA1 and B*

A Rubble bed with large fallen blocks of limestone 2’9” Ruminant mandibular ramus; monkey maxilla withteeth

BC

Stiff red clay with sandy partings 3’6”- 4’ Charcoal, coarse unglazed and thin glazed redpottery fragments

DE

Rubble bed 1’ 6’’- 2’6” Nothing of interest

H** Red cave earth, stony above 12” At one spot an immense quantity of small bones ofrats, bats, lizards, etc.

I Red and mottled cave earth 1’ – 1’3” Nil recordedJ Red-brown cave earth with patches of calcareous

sand1’ Nil recorded

KL

Red sandy cave earth with blocks of limestone 1’ 6”1’

Bed K a bone gouge.Bed L two pieces of stag-hornMost prolific finds of large bones

MNOP

Stiff marly clay taken out in four layers of 1 yardeach in thickness

12’ Bed M also productive of bones

Table 1: Charnel House Cave sediments. (From R. B. Foote, ‘Mr H. B. Foote’s Work at the Billa Surgam Caves’, Records of the GeologicalSurvey of India, 17 (1884), 200–08.)

*The rubble bed Awas found only in the front or western half of the cave; in the back or eastern half, B lies immediately under A1. ** Beds F and G,which lay closer to the back of the cave, are undescribed but ‘were also devoid of anything of special interest’.

6 M. Haslam et al.


Surgam caves, in the first of his two field seasons only.

This site is a long and narrow opening extending east-

wards into the cliff face, and via excavation Foote was

able to follow the crevice more than 300 ft into the hill

before it became impassable.50 He notes the presence of

several unexplored earth-filled side branches, further

confirming the likely great extent of the Billa Surgam

cave system throughout the karst area. Two large pits

were present in the dry dusty guano that comprised the

top layer at the site, and Foote surmises these to be the

result of guano mining (despite local rumours of treas-

ure-hunting). No detailed summary of the Purgatory

sediments is available; however Foote describes a thick

stalagmite deposit visible in the wall of one of the pits

with 3-4 ft of red clay, limestone and stalagmite pieces

beneath this down to the bedrock at a depth of 13 ft.

Unable to clear the entire cave to this level, Henry

Foote instead cleared the soil underneath the stalagmite

‘floor’ for a distance of nine feet, finding some teeth and

bones and two small rough earthern-ware bowls at a

depth of 11 ft below the surface. Foote suggests that the

cave was once filled with the same sediment found under

the stalagmite floor, as portions of this material adhere to

recesses in the cave ceiling.

Having twice destroyed the bee nests in Cathedral

Cave, Henry Foote succeeded in driving them further up

the cliff face (although not away from the site entirely)

and excavations commenced at the site. A summary of

the major finds and descriptions of the ‘beautifully stra-

tified cave earth’, which Foote removed in one-yard-thick

layers, is given in Table 2.51 Of particular importance to

any subsequent investigation of this the largest of the

Bed Description Average Thickness Finds/Comments

C Surface, or bat’s dung 3’ Highly variable in thickness; 4’ behind high altar,6’ in front ofhigh altar behind stalagmite, 1’ on north front. Many smallbones that had lost gelatine but not mineralised.

C Grey sandy with some bat’sdung

3’ Indistinct stratification. Very few large bones, many smallbones that had lost gelatine but not mineralised.

_ Stalagmite in irregularmasses

_ Softer blocks broken up with cold chisel but great majorityhad to be blasted; in all 50 tons of rock removed.

Ca Red sandy cave earth 3’ About one yard thick but considerably thicker at front of cave.Partly underlies high altar and contains many limestoneblocks. In front of the high altar the basement blocks of thestalagmite barrier formed a regular floor. Some of theseblocks of stalagmites are 4 or 5 feet high.

CbCcCd

Stiff red clay excavated inthree layers of 3’ each

9’ Surface covered with a regular pavement of small fallenlimestone; likely from the slow weathering of the roof.Ccvery rich in teeth in places but very poor in front of the highaltar. Like overlying layer becomes sandier behind highaltar and large bones and teeth replaced by smaller ones.May be evidence of owl castings. Red clay thickest whereunderlying sediments scooped out by stream action todepth of 2’ – 2’6”. Excavation of Cd exposed the mouth ofthe Corridor passage leading into the Fairy Chamber intoboth of which the red clay extended and maintained itsrichness in fossil remains. ‘Cd yielded nearly all theimportant large bones found and, excepting Cb, was richestin small bones aswell. Of cut bones Cd yielded nearly twiceas many as all the other beds together’

Ce*Cf

Stiff dark marl 6’ The lower half of the dark marl bed was better than the upper,which contained little but fragments of teeth, many beingparts of molars of rhinoceros.

Ch** Dark loamy marl 3’ The underlying dark loamy bed Ch was fairly rich in smallbones, many belonging to different genera of birds.

CiCj

Grey marl 3’3’

Ci and Cj became increasingly poor in bones.

CkCl

Grey marl 3’3’

These are to all intents and purposes sterile, and LieutenantFoote did not consider them worthy of further exploration.

Table 2: Cathedral Cave sediments. (After R. B. Foote, ‘Notes on the Results of Mr H. B. Foote’s Further Excavations in the Billa SurgamCaves’, Records of the Geological Survey of India, 18 (1885), 227–35.)

* ‘The several beds penetrated by the shaft sunk by Lieutenant Foote after clearing out the whole of Cd and all above it, were of much less interest thatthe red clay above them, from the fact that they yielded but few good bones and teeth, most of the tolerably numerous fossils being fragmentary.’ ** Nobed Cg is recorded.



Billa Surgam caves is that Foote cleared 16 ft of sediment

from its entire surface, and his notes are therefore our

only remaining record of these deposits. Significantly,

Foote comments that the removed layers ‘yielded nearly

all the important large bones found’, as well as having the

richest density of small bones and ‘cut bones’.52A further

21 ft was excavated as a wide shaft against the back wall

of the cave, revealing the opening to a small horizontal

passage running into the hill (dubbed ‘the Corridor’). At

the present time the surface deposits at Cathedral Cave

are roughly level with the opening to this passage. Foote’s

notes on the layers beneath this level (i.e. those extant

today) comment that their faunal content is ‘of much less

interest’ when contrasted with the quality and quantity of

finds in the overlying sediments.53 The lowest levels

were considered sterile and unworthy of future

exploration.54

Clearing the Corridor passage for 55 ft led to an

interior domed chamber (the ‘Fairy Chamber’) approxi-

mately 25 by 12 ft and 10 ft high at the centre.

Excavations were carried out in this chamber, however

little information beyond the presence of a stalagmite

floor up to one inch thick and the presence of fossil-

bearing red cave earth has been provided. The sediment

beds in Cathedral Cave showed a general low dip to the

front of the cave, again suggesting that sediment influx

was via streams originating above the cave system and

entering Cathedral through crevices. Foote repeats his

observations from Charnel House that the main water-

course through the caves laid down ‘only barren strata of

sandy and stony character’, whereas he notes at least two

streams entered from the back of Cathedral Cave to form

the excavated deposits.55 One of these flowed from the

Corridor, while the second was located to the north of the

large stalagmite mass in the eastern cave interior known

as the high altar.

Henry Foote conducted two further small excavations

in the Billa Surgam complex. The first was in a con-

stricted open piece of land high up on the western side

of the gorge, referred to as ‘the garden’.56 This site was

completelydugout, but revealed nothing of interest to the

Footes. The second excavation was in a small cave on the

south side of the covered passage referred to as the

Chapter House (itself the southern-most component of

the connected gorge system). Black gravels to a depth of

1 ft to 18 in. overlay red cave earth, and the depth of the

latter layer is unknown. A solitary large human molar

was found about 4 ft below the surface in the red sedi-

ment, the only human bone recovered from within undis-

turbed cave deposits at Billa Surgam. No other

information on this site has been reported.

The collective faunal findings of the Foote excava-

tions allowed a second assessment of the likely age of the

cave sites. Noting that ‘the very great majority, if not all

the larger animals, belonged to living species’, Foote

concludes that ‘they must therefore be regarded as of

pre-historic or post-pleistocene age’.57 Furthermore, he

suggests that based on associations of ‘neolithic, or

polished’ stone artefacts with similar bone tools in

Europe, then the supposed bone tools of the Kurnool

caves indicated a Neolithic age for these deposits also.

No unequivocal stone artefacts were recovered from

anyof the excavations, despite the extraordinary quantity

of earth (totalling many hundreds of cubic metres)

cleaned out of the caves by the Footes. The elder Foote

comments that his son, ‘who is quite familiar with such

antiquities, devoted very special attention to the search

for them and examined personally many thousands of

stones turned up during the excavations, besides exhibit-

ing typical implements both palaeolithic and neolithic to

his diggers’.58 The three field seasons located only one

possible artefact, a tiny triangular flake of transparent

quartz, however in his final report Foote is clearly not

convinced of the anthropogenic origins of this piece.59

His conclusion as to human occupation of the Billa

Surgam caves is more certain:

[. . .] no traces were found of the continued residence ofman or of large carnivora in any of the caves. No cook-ing-places of any size were found. . .nor was any potterymet with in any of the lower lying beds. Only very fewcalcined or charred bones were found, and they were inthe superficial deposits of the Cathedral and Purgatory.60

Despite this firm conclusion, Foote remained receptive

to the notion of extensive bone tool creation and use at

the sites. In publications on the latter two field seasons

Foote reports a large number of shaped bone pieces

from Charnel House and Cathedral Caves.61 Following

the third and final field season, Foote records that

approximately 4700 worked and unworked bone speci-

mens had been registered, although this is a likely under-

estimate of numbers found as it appears that not all small

bones were collected.62 ‘Cut and trimmed’ bones make

up approximately 1700 of these specimens, with the

rest unmodified bones or teeth. Interestingly, only 200

of the modified bones ‘may be considered to represent

real implements prepared with a definite purpose’.

In Foote’s classification, these include: awls, arrow heads

(with a maximum of one barb), spear-heads, a dagger,

gouge, scrapers, chisels, wedges and ‘sockets’. The

remainder of the modified bones have no distinct form

and ‘though often elaborately cut, are so vaguely shaped

that it is hard to conceive of their having been prepared

for any definite object; they rather suggest the idea that

their fashioners were simply amusing themselves as they

whittled them’.63

Alongside these oddly modified pieces Foote records

a single brown cylindrical bead, possibly of bone, from

the upper layers of Cathedral Cave.64 No other evidence

of ornamental or artistic activity was found by the Footes,

8 M. Haslam et al.


although parietal art was a specific target of the explora-

tions. Foote records that:

No paintings or drawings were found in either set ofcaves [Billa Surgam and nearby Yerra Zari], though theseveral passages were very carefully examined. Therather dark passages were examined with lighted magne-sium wire, but that revealed no attempts at decoration.65

He somewhat uncharitably goes on to surmise that ‘The

prehistoric people had in all probability little artistic

taste’.

None of the implements or ornaments noted by Foote

was illustrated in his reports, although he expressed a

desire that they would be included ‘in the full memoir to

be drawn up about the Kurnool caves’, a monograph that

did not eventuate.66 Foote’s intent at the time of excava-

tion was to ship the cave finds to Europe because com-

parative bone implements were not available in India, but

it is unlikely this ever occurred.67 Describing his anti-

quities collection (in a volume published posthumously),

Foote provides a footnote on the Billa Surgam finds: ‘The

remains here referred to are a few carved bones and

marked teeth of Magdalenian aspect. . .The small box

containing them was lost sight of for several years, but

was found again quite lately’.68 In another short note in

the same volume he comments that: ‘It was only quite

lately that their Magdalenian character struck me, when I

looked at them after finding the missing box’.69 These

promising statements must have been written prior to

Foote’s death in December 1912, perhaps around

1908.70 Nevertheless, a few short years later the curator

of the Indian Museum in Calcutta comments that ‘The

carved bones and marked teeth of Magdalenian aspect

found by Foote in a cave in the Karnul district of

Southern India are now lost’.71 Both Logan and

Cammiade were unsuccessful in their efforts to track

the pieces down.72

The Billa Surgam faunal remains

Foote considered at the conclusion of his excavations that

the ‘anthropological results so far obtained are rather

disappointing from their negative character’.73 Efforts

to characterise the Billa Surgam faunal component were

however much more successful. As the excavation sea-

sons progressed Foote made preliminary taxonomic

identifications of several of the recovered macro- and

micro-vertebrate remains, with an emphasis on the larger

mammalian.74 These included various genera of deer and

antelope, tiger, rhinoceros, pig, dog, ass, mongoose and

possibly bear. Smaller mammals included porcupine and

other rodents, as well as numerous bats, while non-mam-

malian remains included crocodile, lizards, snakes, frogs

and an abundance of bird bones (including those of the

raptor family). No attempt was made to assess diachronic

variation in frequencies of these taxa. Many of the bones

were broken or crushed by roof fall or minimal transport,

with Foote noting in particular that: ‘no entire crania or

large fragments of crania were found, though many

mandibles or rami of mandibles with or without their

teeth were met with, from those of Rhinoceros down to

those of minute shrews and rodents’.75

Richard Lydekker, a British Museum palaeontologist

formerly attached to the GSI, examined the fauna in

Calcutta where these specimens remain to this day.76

Lydekker’s list varied from Foote’s previously published

lists, as he identified some species that Foote did not

recognise, and he was unable to confirm some of

Foote’s determinations. Given his specialist background,

the Lydekker list (see Table 3; Figure 3) must be accepted

as the more definitive of the two.77 Lydekker considered

ovine and caprid bones from the surface levels of

Purgatory and Charnel House Caves to be recent.

However, a comparatively large number of the identified

species were either totally extinct or no longer found

living in India, leading him to conclude they were Late

Pleistocene in age. In support of this, Lydekker reports

that the majority of the bones were stained ‘a full brown

colour’ and strongly mineralised.78 The faunal list

includes previously undescribed species of rhinoceros,

civet, porcupine and pig, as well as species now found

only in Africa, marking the Billa Surgam caves as centres

of importance for palaeontology in southern India.79

Environmental reconstructions have since been

attempted using the Billa Surgam fauna, but the absence

of reliable absolute dates has severely reduced the use-

fulness of such efforts.80

Lydekker did not examine the human remains, nor the

cut bones and implements. He injected a note of caution

nonetheless:

[. . .] I mayobserve that a veryconsiderable number of thelarger bones sent to me have been gnawed by porcupines,and I would venture to suggest the necessity of submit-ting the reputed cut bones (and perhaps some of the‘instruments’) to a stringent examination with a view ofdetermining whether they may not have been subject tothe same action.81

This observation goes a long way towards explaining

Foote’s difficulties in assigning his bone ‘tools’ to func-

tional categories, and both Logan and to a limited extent

Foote himself later recognised that porcupines were a

significant factor in shaping the Billa Surgam bone

assemblage.82 Foote’s observation that the worked

bones from Billa Surgam appeared to have been scraped

or roughly cut rather than cleanly sliced (which he attri-

butes to their having been worked with stone, despite the

noted lack of any such lithic implements) also tallies with

gnawing as the likely culprit.83 Gnawing cannot explain



the internal polishing of the supposed bone gouge from

Charnel House - ‘the best specimen of man’s work that

was found in the caves’ – but even in this case the cutting

edge of the gouge was missing and the observed modifi-

cations to other edges may not have been anthropo-

genic.84 In any case, the ambiguity surrounding the

bone ‘tools’ and the lack of stone artefacts from the

Foote excavations do not lend support to claims such as

that of Deshpande-Mukherjee et al. that: ‘The overall

cultural material yielded ample evidence for the human

occupation of the caves during this period [the late

Pleistocene]’.85

Twentieth-century exploration

Following the publication of Lydekker’s report on the

Billa Surgam fauna, the caves entered a period of spora-

dic discussion and only occasional exploration.86

Importantly, it was during this period in the late nine-

teenth century and first half of the twentieth century that

the caves established their place as a site of premier

importance to Indian archaeology. To a large extent the

first genuine renewal of interest was in the 1920s, owing

to the lawyer and ‘sometime Collector of Kurnool

(Madras)’ L. A. Cammiade.87 His article entitled

‘Prehistoric Man in India and the Kurnool Bone Caves:

A Neglected Field of Inquiry’ sums up the state of con-

cern for Billa Surgam at the time.88

Cammiade notes that India had been left out of the

debates over humanity’s origins that were sparked by

fossil discoveries in Africa, Europe, and East Asia

despite the great promise of the region for addressing

such questions.89 In the late 1920s the Billa Surgam sites

were the only known fossiliferous caves in India. The

paucity of Pleistocene human remains from the subcon-

tinent (a situation unremedied even today) was therefore,

Cammiade suggested, best addressed through further

investigation of this locality. Cammiade had visited the

caves, and observed that the front portions of the caves

remained intact, albeit covered in roof fall and the spoil

Ungulata Carnivora Rodentia

MAMMALIAEquus asinus Felis tigris (or ? leo) Sciurus macrurusRhinoceros karnuliensis Felis pardus (?) Gerbillus indicusBos or Bubalus sp. Felis chaus Nesokia bandicootaBoselaphus tragocamelus Felis rubiginosa Nesokia kokGazella bennetti Hyaena crocuta Mus mettadaAntilope cervicapra Viverra karnuliensis Mus platythrixTetraceros quadricornis Prionodon (?) sp. Mus sp.Cervus aristotelis Herpestes griseus Gollunda elliotiCervus axis Herpestes fuscus Hystrix crassidensCervulus muntjac (?) Herpestes nipalensis Atherura karnuliensisTragulus (cf. meminna) Ursus labiatusSus cristatus ChiropteraSus karnuliensis Insectivora Taphozous saccolaemus

Sorex sp. Phyllorhina diadema

PrimatesSemnopithecus entellus EdentataCynocephalus sp. Manis gigantea

AVESAccipitres Alectorides GallinaeNoephron percnopterus Grus (cf. communis) Francolinus pictus? Milvus or Circus Francolinus pondicerianusKetupa ceylonensis HerodionesBubo coromandus Ibis melanocephala

REPTILIACrocodilus sp. Naia tripudians Ptyas mucosusVaranus dracaena Python molurus Geckonidae (?)Agamidae (?)

AMPHIBIABufo (cf. melanostictus)

MOLLUSCAHelix cysis Helix vitellina Helix indicaBulimus insularis Cyclophorus involutus

Table 3: Fauna list for the combined Billa Surgam caves (Lydekker, ‘The Fauna of the Karnul Caves’).

10 M. Haslam et al.


heaps from Foote’s work. Furthermore, he notes that the

caves were once part of a single large system, and chides

Foote for excavating inwards from each cave’s entrance:

For some inexplicable reason, Bruce Foote [. . .]neglected the place which was once a well-lighted andspacious cavern and dug in a part of the caves which atthe time when the cave was complete must have been low,dark, damp and dismal and infested with rats, bats, ban-dicoots and porcupine.90

A passionate advocate for further exploration at Billa

Surgam, Cammiade was not able to conduct his own

excavations at the caves. He nonetheless accepted and

relied upon Foote’s positive identification of

‘Magdelanian’ bone tools, and used this information to

place the Kurnool sites (and the broader Indian

Palaeolithic) within a cultural sequence comparable to

that of Europe. Specifically, he suggests that the Billa

Surgam deposits temporally succeed an Indian

‘Capsian’ phase (characterised by flake-knives and

acutely pointed tools) that was itself contemporaneous

with the EuropeanAurignacian.91Thus, the Billa Surgam

caves became one of the cornerstones for the acceptance

of an Indian Upper Palaeolithic (see below).

Continued renewed interest was directed to the Billa

Surgam caves after the Second World War, prompted by

the growing interest in their Palaeolithic potential. Two

visits to the caves are recorded for 1957–58, although it is

likely that further unpublished explorations had taken

place since Cammiade’s work. Indirect evidence for this

3. A selection of the fauna recorded by Lydekker from the Billa Surgam Caves; species names and descriptions given here are thoseassigned by Lydekker and may be outdated. (a,b) Semnopithecus entellus: part of the right maxilla and mandible, Charnel House BedM.(c) Herpestes griseus: left humerus, Cathedral Bed Ca. (d) Hystrix crassidens: left mandible and cheek teeth, Cathedral Bed Cd. (e)Viverra karnuliensis: Partial left mandible, Charnel House Bed L. (f) Felis tigris (?leo): first phalangeal of the third digit of the pes,Purgatory. (g)? Felis pardus: first phalangeal, Cathedral Bed Cc. (h)Manis gigantea: terminal phalangeal of the middle digit of the rightmanus, Cathedral Bed Cc. (i)Herpestes griseus: left mandible, Cathedral Bed Ch. (j) Felis rubiginosa: right mandible, Cathedral Bed Cb.(k) Felis chaus: left mandible, Cathedral Bed Ca. (l) Ursus labiatus: distal right humerus, Chapter House South Bed Ab. (m) Hystrixcrassidens: right humerus, Cathedral Bed Cd. Adapted from Lydekker, ‘The Fauna of the Karnul Caves’; no scale in original.



assertion comes from the death in 1935 of Captain

Leonard Munn, amateur prehistorian and head of the

Indian government’s Well-Sinking programme.92 Munn

was an unfortunate victim of the same Billa Surgam bees

that had troubled the Footes so greatly in the 1880s.

Neither one of the late 1950s site visits involved

excavation, although both explicitly targeted the Foote

sections in their inspections. In a brief account published

in 1958, Shri K. V. Soundara Rajan and Dr. R. V. Johsi of

the Prehistory Branch of the Department of Archaeology

‘did not find in them any Stone Age artefacts or fossils’.93

A trial excavation by the same team in nearby Kishnama-

kona-gavi was similarly unsuccessful, although a Lower

Palaeolithic biface and flake industry on quartzite was

identified in the neighbouring Galaru valley.

The second published report of Billa Surgam explora-

tion in 1957 was by Raymond and Bridget Allchin, two of

South Asia’s most prominent twentieth-century archaeol-

ogists. Travelling by bullock cart from Betamcherla with

Dr P. Sreenivasachar (Director of Archaeology in Andhra

Pradesh), the Allchins inspected Foote’s cut sections and

‘no stone tools or signs of regular occupation’ were

noted.94 The Allchins echo Foote’s own sentiments in

noting that the outcome of the 1880s excavations may be

considered ‘somewhat disappointing’, and accept that

doubts over the origins of the supposed bone implements

from the site left no finds unambiguously attributable to

human agency.

It appears that at least portions of the spoil heaps left

by the Footes were still reasonably intact in 1957, to the

extent that the Allchins were able to collect the fragments

of a Neolithic pot from one pile and have it reconstructed

at the British Museum. From its form, depositional loca-

tion, and similarity to enthnographically-recorded exam-

ples, the Allchins speculate that it may be a hive-pot for

nesting honey-bees, and that its presence at the site is

owed to the long-term residence of Billa Surgam’s Apiscolonies. Despite the link between Neolithic and present-

day populations that this find suggested, the predominant

interest in Pleistocene material from the caves meant this

report passed largely unnoticed.

In the late 1960s K. N. Prasad and K. K. Verma of the

Geological Surveyof India conducted the first widespread

survey of the Billa Surgam locality and surrounding cave

sites.95The primary aim of the work was regional palaeoe-

cological reconstruction, and this team dug a large trench

in the southeast portion of Cathedral Cave (in front of the

Corridor), recovering numerous faunal remains inter-

preted as being of Pleistocene age owing to the presence

of fossilised taxa such as bear and rhinoceros. These

excavations are thought to have surrounded or incorpo-

rated Henry Foote’s 1884 shaft, as only one deep sounding

is present at the site, and the section left by this work

remained standing when explorations recommenced in

the twenty-first century (see below).

The full findings from the 1960s investigations

remain unpublished; however Prasad has published a

brief record of a number of small caves in the vicinity

of Billa Surgam.96 He provides another list of faunal

remains from the collective cave sites. Intriguingly,

Prasad also lists an early radiocarbon date for the caves,

noting:

[. . .] the Kurnool Caves yielded late Pleistocene bonetools, flakes and scrapers. Carbon-14 (C14) dates haveestablished an age of 50,000 years BP for the artifacts.Radiometric dating was carried out at the PhysicalResearch Laboratory, Ahmedabad, in 1979 and subse-quent years.97

No contextual information is provided, not even the name

of the specific dated cave, and the age of the sample at the

radiocarbon limit raises questions. No laboratory code or

error range are given, and for these combined reasons the

date is essentially unusable at this stage.

Two excavations in the 1970s mark the second major

phase of archaeological research in the Billa Surgam area’s

caves. Both concentrated on the central importance of

bone tools for claims of an Indian Upper Palaeolithic

equivalent to that of Europe, and were influenced by the

work of prominent Indian prehistorian H. D. Sankalia.

Sankalia stressed the similarities of certain Indian stone

blade assemblages to some of the European sites asso-

ciated with early modern humans. This stance built on

Cammiade’s clear emphasis of the missing Billa Surgam

bone ‘tools’ as aligning Indian prehistory with that of

Europe, a position repeated by almost all discussions of

the Indian Upper Palaeolithic to this day.98 As Murty

points out, ‘the hall mark of the Upper Palaeolithic in

several other regions of the Old World is lithic blade and

bone tool technology’, and the bone tools from the Billa

Surgam locality (the onlyones known in India) were there-

fore vital in justifying the introduction and present accep-

tance of the term in Indian archaeology.99 The ‘Upper

Palaeolithic’ was placed between the Indian Middle and

Late Stone Ages (using the nomenclature decided upon at

the first conference on Asian Archaeology in 1961) or

Middle Palaeolithic and Mesolithic (using more recent

Eurocentric terminology).100

The first major project to be conducted around

Betamcherla under this new framework concentrated on

one of the ‘Kurnool Caves’, but importantly not one of

the caves within the Billa Surgam complex itself. The

targeted site was Muchchatla Chintamanu Gavi (MCG),

some 4-5 km southwest of Billa Surgam.101 This small

cave site yielded a reported 2003 bone tools, of which

151 are finished forms (perforators, shouldered points,

etc.), 878 are ‘bone blanks’ and 635 are ‘splinters’. None

of the illustrated forms are clearly worked bones, and

only seventy-three excavated bones are not considered

tools in Murty’s account. Multiple porcupine coprolites

12 M. Haslam et al.


were found in two of the three cave layers, suggesting

that similar taphonomic influences may have affected the

MCG bones as at Billa Surgam, and belying Murty’s

comment that ‘There is no evidence whatsoever, any-

where in the sediment, to indicate either the burrowing

activity of rodents or an occupation of the cave by ani-

mals during or after the deposition of the sediment’.102

Accompanying the bones were 223 lithic artefacts,

ninety-one of which were blades and 196 were of the

same limestone as the cave system. None of the blades

were retouched, and most displayed diffuse or absent

bulbs of percussion. Murty suggests that the blade com-

ponent of the lithic assemblage ‘is in line with the Upper

Palaeolithic blade tradition’, and that therefore the asso-

ciated ‘bone tools’ could also be considered part of the

Indian Upper Palaeolithic.103 Furthermore, since the

recovered faunal assemblage indicated Late Pleistocene

species, then the Upper Palaeolithic remains are consid-

ered to be of the same age. Murty then extends this same

date to open air sites in the same region with blade tools

but no bone artefacts, on the basis that the bones must

have degraded in those sites.

A small collection of lithic artefacts from Billa

Surgam was included in a broad study of surface finds

in the area reported by Murty and Reddy in the mid-

1970s. They found blade artefacts as well as flakes,

nodules, scrapers, cores and chips in ‘the exposed calci-

fied cave deposit of Billa Surgam’, which must refer to

the Cathedral Cave section left by Foote and the GSI

study.104 Illustrated pieces from this location show

items made of the same limestone as the cave itself,

with ‘irregularly flaked dorsal surface[s]’.105 Small

(c. 5–6 cm) blades are also shown, and the authors sug-

gest that their derivation from the Billa Surgam deposits

proves Late Pleistocene occupation of the caves by peo-

ple with a ‘blade-and-bone’ technology. However, the

bone ‘implements’ referred to are those recovered by

Foote from Charnel House and the removed upper levels

of Cathedral Cave, not from sediments extant in the

1970s. Even if human agency is uncritically accepted in

the shaping of the Foote bone tools and the purported

stone tools, there remains no indication of concurrent

stone and bone tool use at Billa Surgam.

The first archaeological excavation in almost a cen-

tury within the Billa Surgam complex itself was under-

taken in the 1970s by K. Thimma Reddy, who excavated

the previously unexplored cave opening onto the north-

ern edge of the Chapter House.106 Reddy does not pro-

vide a name for this site and it has subsequently been

designated Chapter House North.107 The excavations, to

a depth of 3.5 m, resulted in the first published discovery

of stone artefacts (n ¼ 1356) in association with faunal

remains at Billa Surgam.108 Most of the lithic assem-

blage consisted of flakes and chips (n ¼ 981, or 73%)

although 240 artefacts were identified as tools (e.g.,

burins, points, borers, scrapers). While an age was not

assigned to the top layer of silt mixed with guano and

limestone chunks, the deposits were clearly of Late

Holocene age as four potsherds were recovered. The

recovery of an ‘incipient blade industry’ (160 of 951

lithic artefacts) in the second layer (35–155 cm depth)

was interpreted as evidence of an Upper Palaeolithic

occupation; below this layer very few finds were recov-

ered. Almost all the artefacts recovered were patinated;

significantly, Reddy commented that a bulb of percus-

sion was seen on very few of the examples and that

retouch was rare or poor (even on so-called ‘scrapers’),

casting doubt on their artefactual status as natural edge

breakage produces a similar pattern. None of the cores

illustrated in the article are typical blade cores, although

it is reported that sixty-three such cores were found, and

the illustrated flakes and blades indicate an often hap-

hazard flaking pattern.

The Chapter House North stone tools were suggested

to be associated with a bone tool industry, the presence of

which reportedly ‘confirms at the outset the observation

made by Foote that Billa Surgam was inhabited or

frequented by prehistoric man in his early stage of

culture’.109 The bone tool industry was collected from

two separate cave contexts (i.e. Chapter House North and

the nearby Kottala Polimera Gavi), with a total of 147

bone objects classified as finished forms (n ¼ 47),

worked bones, and bone blanks. The finished pieces

were classified as points, chisel-edge tools, perforators,

spatulae, and scrapers. Reddy does not mention the

doubts expressed by Lydekker and Allchin and Allchin

over the porcupine influence on the Billa Surgam assem-

blage, and while it is conceivable that some of the bones

were the product of human activities, it has been argued

based on review of artefact drawings that animal contri-

butions were likely.110

Significantly, over 95% of the faunal remains

reported by Reddy (n ¼ 910 of 949 items) are not from

Chapter House North but instead from Kottala Polimera

Gavi, a cave that is very restricted in size and that did not

produce stone artefacts. Reconstructions based on these

remains of a purported Late Pleistocene ‘scrub-to-tree

jungle with thick grass cover and, at places, swamps’

are therefore not connected at this stage to the archae-

ological findings.111 In summary, the results from the

1970s Chapter House North study do not show a defini-

tive ‘Upper Palaeolithic’ occupation.

Renewed investigations, 2003–08

The third phase of major fieldwork at the Billa Surgam

complex began in 2003 as a collaboration between

R. Korisettar, of Karnatak Univeristy, and M. Petraglia,

of the University of Oxford. The Kurnool District



Archaeological Project focuses on a number of sites

around Betamcherla and Banganapalle ranging from the

Lower Palaeolithic to the Neolithic.112 One aim of the

project is to determine the potential for the caves to

provide palaeoenvironmental and possibly archaeologi-

cal data for the Late Pleistocene. Here we summarise the

initial explorations and findings for the three caves that

we have tested to date: Cathedral, Charnel House and

Chapter House North.113

As the aim of the renewed excavations (Figure 4) was

to retrieve fine-resolution sedimentological, palaeofau-

nal and archaeological information, excavations were

considerably smaller than those employed by the

Footes, but all material was screened through 5 mm

sieves. Approximately 15 m3 was excavated in Charnel

House, with the main trench placed into a block of sedi-

ment left untouched at the front of the cave by the Footes.

This block is sharply truncated just inside the existing

drip line by the ‘Foote Section’: a vertical drop of some

2.2 m running approximately north-south that apparently

marks the westernmost edge of the 1880s excavations.

The standing sediments align with bands of leached cal-

cium and pale cave walls that slope downwards towards

the entrance and likely mark the cave floor prior to any

sediment removal (Figure 2c). We also excavated

approximately 4.5 m3 of deposits from Cathedral Cave,

by cutting a wide but shallow trench down 4.6 m into the

western edge of the trench left by the nineteenth and

twentieth century studies described earlier. Finally,

around 5 m3 was excavated in Chapter House North by

placing trenches adjacent to those left by Reddy in the

1970s. In Figure 1, the grey areas showing trench place-

ment include the areas of the previous excavations for

both Cathedral and Chapter House North Caves.

Both the Charnel House and Chapter House North

Caves contain compact red-orange-brown silty sedi-

ments (Figure 5), although the former also has alternat-

ing strata comprised of poorly-sorted, moderately

packed, pebble to boulder-sized weathered limestone

rubble resulting from significant roof-fall events. At

Charnel House the reddish silts may correspond with

Foote’s Beds B and C, from which pottery was reportedly

recovered. Late Neolithic and Iron Age ceramics were

recovered in the upper levels of our excavation at

Chapter House North, from deposits partially dated by

radiocarbon to 250–600 cal. AD.114 These finds add

weight to the suggestion that the silts (in some places

silty sands) were deposited in the cave complex during

the Late Holocene, and support the Allchins’s observa-

tions of Neolithic activity at the complex.115

Significantly, the same sedimentary description was

applied by Foote to deposits he and his son completely

removed from the upper surface of Cathedral Cave,116

suggesting that the deep remnant sediments in Cathedral

(Figure 5a) may be in part of Pleistocene age. These

lower deposits are light brown, yellowand grey in colour,

typically silty with decomposing limestone throughout

and areas of carbonate accretion. A very dark layer

approximately 3.2 m below the surface at Cathedral is

highly organic and may be composed primarily of guano.

No evidence of hearths or cultural accumulations of

objects was encountered in these sites, other than in the

Neolithic levels of Chapter House Cave.

Limestone fragments were recovered from all three

caves, with super-abundant quantities from Charnel

House in particular. The high frequencyat this site relates

primarily to the roof-fall events, which our on-site

experimental tests demonstrated would have produced

4. Recent excavation in the Billa Surgam caves. (a) Chapter House North Cave, facing west; the majority of this sediment was removed byReddy in the 1970s, with the newexcavation located where the excavator is sitting. (b) Charnel House Cave, facing northwest; the trench isplaced into the only remaining sediment in the cave, with the ‘Foote Section’ located behind the photographer. (c) Cathedral Cave, facingnorth; the section under examination was cut into the north wall of the larger trench left by the Footes and twentieth-centurypalaeoenvironmental studies.

14 M. Haslam et al.


large quantities of shatter of all shapes and sizes, includ-

ing pieces that mimic culturally-flaked stone. Material

washed in over the edge of the gorge, roof-spall within

the caves, the action of the seasonal stream, and the cattle

and goats which are herded through the complex would

also serve to fracture the limestone in a manner which

could appear deliberate. The problem of discerning nat-

ural from cultural material therefore remains a key diffi-

culty. Initial technological analysis of the stone from our

excavations suggests that there are presently no unam-

biguous indications of human lithic manufacture in the

cave complex, and that the large majority of fractured

stone is undoubtedly of natural origin. Future functional

(use-wear and residue) analysis may help resolve this

issue. Note that this does not exclude the possibility of a

limited number of lithic artefacts being present in the

Billa Surgam deposits, but extreme caution and explicit

criteria will be required to assess these pieces.

Faunal remains were found throughout the Charnel

House and Cathedral trenches (with the exception of the

lower 40 cm of the latter) and in the upper portions of the

m deep Chapter House Cave excavation. Analysis of

these finds is ongoing, however macro- and micro-verte-

brate remains and molluscan fauna are sufficiently

5. Sediment logs. (a) For Cathedral Cave. (b) For Charnel House Cave. (c) For Chapter House North Cave. Recorded 20 February 2008.



abundant that palaeoenvironmental reconstruction

should be possible. In particular, the micro-vertebrate

assemblage (especially bats and rodents) is considerable

across the three Billa Surgam sites. The recovered collec-

tion of larger fauna appears to reflect the same genera

identified by Lydekker, with the greatest concentration of

this material in the upper levels of the Cathedral trench,

supporting Foote’s assessment of declining macro-verte-

brate material with depth at this site. Despite the absence

of cultural features and ambiguity of any artefacts, there-

fore, generally good preservation of the bone assemblage

offers one potential avenue, through human fossils or

cut-marked bones, by which Pleistocene human activity

in the caves may be discerned at the Billa Surgam

complex.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, during our excavations modern limestone

quarrying was taking place directly at the entrance to the

cave complex, with talus from these activities beginning

to obscure parts of the large entrance-way into the main

gorge near Charnel House Cave (Figure 6; see also

Figure 1a). When this activity was first noted at the

commencement of the 2008 field season, talks were

held between the archaeologists and local landowners

and politicians, emphasising the historic, scientific and

educational value of the complex. This approach was

successful in having the mining halted at that point,

however ongoing monitoring and negotiations are likely

required to ensure long-term protection for the complex.

Recent excavations at the Billa Surgam complex have

revealed evidence for Neolithic occupation in Chapter

House North Cave, and provided the first reliable dates

for these activities.117 No finds have yet been recovered

that would support claims of an ‘Upper Palaeolithic’

phase of occupation at Chapter House North, however.

Exploration of the two main caves, Charnel House and

Cathedral, likewise did not reveal unambiguous human

occupation debris, reiterating the findings made by the

Footes 120 years ago. Detailed technological and forma-

tion studies are currently underway to resolve the ambi-

guities associated with the natural fracture of limestone

at the cave complex, and cultural material may be

revealed by this study. Occupation evidence may also

remain undiscovered in the remnant deeper sediments

at Charnel House, and away from the open trench in the

Cathedral Cave. Significantly for our view of Late

Pleistocene human activity in the sub-continent, sugges-

tions of an ‘Upper Palaeolithic’ bone tool and stone blade

technology at the Billa Surgam cave complex do not gain

support either from recent studies or a review of earlier

explorations. While this does not preclude the presence

of such a technological complex elsewhere in India, it

does mean that the Billa Surgam cave deposits should not

be used as supporting evidence for such a complex.

This paper has set out for the first time the complete

history of exploration of the Billa Surgam cave com-

plex, including archaeological, palaeontological and

palaeoenvironmental investigations. Importantly, the

presence of an Upper Palaeolithic (or more specifically

‘Magdalanian’) facies at the complex has not been

revealed by our work. Nevertheless the caves retain

central importance for Indian archaeology and palaeon-

tology, both for their potential to reveal further environ-

mental and cultural data over the coming decades, and

for their rich history of exploration dating back to the

earliest days of systematic archaeology in South Asia.

Billa Surgam also presents a case study in the benefits

of taphonomic and site formation studies for under-

standing stone and bone assemblages. Perhaps aptly, it

was the recognition of complex depositional histories

for cave sequences that Buckland used to deny the

co-existence of humans and extinct animals, at the

time of Newbold’s first steps into Billa Surgam. In any

6. Modern mining talus beginning to obscure the main entranceto the Billa Surgam complex, facing south-east (see alsoFigure 1a).

16 M. Haslam et al.


case, the interconnected actions of Newbold, the Footes,

Huxley, Cammiade, the Allchins, Prasad, Sankalia,

Murty, Reddy and even the Cathedral Cave bee colonies

form one of the subcontinent’s grand narratives of

exploration in pursuit of its deep human past. This is

also an ongoing story, as current international collabora-

tive research demonstrates, and it is one deserving of

long-term preservation.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Our thanks to the villagers of Kottala, along with Jinu

Koshy, Smriti Haricharan, Shankar Pujar and Ranjith,

and all members of the field crew, for their support. Our

thanks also to an anonymous reviewer, who helped clarify

this manuscript.We gratefully acknowledge the support of

the Archaeological Surveyof India, the American Institute

of Indian Studies, and the Betamcherla sarpanch, Raja

Reddy. The 2003–08Billa Surgam excavationswere spon-

sored by the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust and

the Leakey Foundation, with the support of Karnatak

University and the University of Cambridge.

NOTES

1. L. A. Cammiade, ‘Prehistoric Man in India and the

Kurnool Bone Caves: A Neglected Field of Inquiry’,

Man in India, 7 (1927), 1–12 (p. 12).

2. F. R. Allchin and B. Allchin, ‘A Neolithic Pot from

Andhra Pradesh’, Antiquity, 36 (1962), 302–04.

3. L. A. Cammiade, ‘Notes on the Exploration of the

Kurnool Bone Caves’, Man in India, 6 (1926), 174–

81; K. N. Prasad and P. Yadagiri, ‘Pleistocene Cave

Fauna, Kurnool District, Andhra Pradesh’, Recordsof the Geological Survey of India, 115 (1986), 71–77.

4. M. L. K. Murty and K.T. Reddy, ‘The Significance of

Lithic Finds in the Cave Areas of Kurnool, India’,

Asian Perspectives, 18 (1975), 214–26; Prasad and

Yadagiri.

5. M. L. K. Murty, ‘Ethnoarchaeology of the Kurnool

Cave Areas, South India’, World Archaeology, 17(1985), 192–205.

6. K. N. Prasad, ‘Pleistocene Cave Fauna from

Peninsular India’, Journal of Caves and KarstStudies, 58 (1996), 30–34.

7. K. T. Reddy, ‘Billasurgam: an Upper Palaeolithic

Cave Site in South India’, Asian Perspectives, 20

(1977), 206–27.

8. Prasad and Yadagiri.

9. T. J. Newbold, ‘Note on the Osseous Breccia and

Deposit in the Caves of Billa Soorgum, lat. 15˚ 25’,

long. 78˚ 15’, Southern India’, Journal of the AsiaticSociety of Bengal, 13 (1844), 610–11.

10. R. W. Home, ‘The Royal Society and the Empire:

the Colonial and Commonwealth Fellowship. Part

1. 1731–1847’, Notes and Records of the RoyalSociety, 56 (2002), 307–32.

11. T. J. Newbold, ‘On Rock-basins in the Bed of the

Toombuddra, Southern India’, Proceedings of theGeological Society of London, 3 (1842), 702–05;

T. J. Newbold, ‘On the Geology of Egypt’,

Quaternary Journal of the Geological Society,4 (1848), 324–49; C. R. Darwin, ‘Letter to the

Geologicial Society’, 4 October 1842. Letter 647,

Darwin Correspondence Project, University of

Cambridge.

12. D. Grayson, The Establishment of Human Antiquity(New York: Academic Press, 1983).

13. W. Buckland, Reliquiae Diluvianae, or, Observationson theOrganic Remains Contained inCaves, Fissures,and Diluvial Gravel, and on Other GeologicalPhenomena, Attesting the Action of an UniversalDeluge (London: John Murray, 1823); C. Lyell,

Principles of Geology (London: John Murray, 1832).

14. See G. Cuvier, Recherches sur les ossemens fossilesde quadrupèdes (Paris: Chez Deterville, 1812).

15. R. I. Murchison, The Silurian System, Founded onGeological Researches (London: John Murray,

1839); Grayson.

16. For example, C. Lyell.

17. Grayson.

18. Newbold, ‘Note on the Osseous Breccia’, p. 610.

19. R. B. Foote, ‘Rough Notes on Billa Surgam and

Other Caves in the Kurnool District’, Records ofthe Geological Survey of India, 17 (1884), 27–34.



22. See R. B. Foote, ‘Rough Notes on Billa Surgam’.

23. S. Pappu, ‘Prehistoric Antiquities and Personal Lives:

The Untold Story of Robert Bruce Foote’, Man andEnvironment, 33 (2008), 30–50.

24. K. A. R. Kennedy, God-Apes and Fossil Men (Ann

Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000).

25. M. E. G. Duff, ‘Letter to Thomas H. Huxley’, 8

January 1883. Imperial College London Thomas

Henry Huxley Collection, Series 1d, Inventory ID

15.13; R. B. Foote, ‘Rough Notes on Billa Surgam’.

26. R. B. Foote, ‘Rough Notes on Billa Surgam’; R. B.,

The Foote Collection of Indian Prehistoric andProtohistoric Antiquities, and Notes on their Agesand Distribution (Madras: Government Museum,

1916), p. 191.

27. A. d’Archiac,Histoire des Progress de la Geologie de1834 à 1845 (Paris: Ministere de l’instruction pub-

lique, Society Geologie de France, 1848), p. 327.

28. M. E. G. Duff, ‘Letter’, 8 January 1883.

29. M. E. G. Duff, ‘Letter to Thomas H. Huxley’, 30

December 1883. Imperial College London Thomas



Henry Huxley Collection, Series 1d, Inventory ID

15.15; contraR.B. Foote,TheFoote Collection, p.191.30. C. R. Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of

Natural Selection (London: John Murray, 1859).

31. R. B. Foote, ‘Mr H. B. Foote’s Work at the Billa

Surgam Caves’, Records of the Geological Survey ofIndia, 17 (1884), 200–08.

32. R. Lydekker, ‘The Fauna of the Karnul Caves’,

Palaeontologica Indica, Series X, 4 (1886), 23–58

(p. 24).

33. M. E. G. Duff, ‘Letter’, 30 December 1883; ‘Letter

to Thomas H. Huxley’, 21 January 1884. Imperial

College London Thomas Henry Huxley Collection,

Series 1d, Inventory ID 15.18; R. B. Foote, ‘MrH. B.

Foote’s work’; R. B. Foote, ‘Notes on the Results of

Mr H. B. Foote’s Further Excavations in the Billa

Surgam Caves’, Records of the Geological Survey ofIndia, 18 (1885), 227–35.

34. R. B. Foote, ‘Rough Notes on Billa Surgam’,

pp. 28–29.

35. R. B. Foote, ‘Rough Notes on Billa Surgam’, p. 29.

36. R. B. Foote, ‘Mr H. B. Foote’s Work’, p. 203.

37. R. B. Foote, ‘Rough Notes on Billa Surgam’.

38. R. B. Foote, ‘Rough Notes on Billa Surgam’; M. E.

G. Duff, ‘Letter’, 21 January 1884.






44. R. B. Foote, The Foote Collection, p. 192; M. E. G.

Duff, ‘Letter’, 30 December 1883.

45. M. E. G. Duff, ‘Letter’, 21 January 1884; R. B.

Foote, ‘Mr H. B. Foote’s Work’.

46. R. B. Foote, ‘Mr H. B. Foote’s Work’, ‘Notes on the

Results’.



49. See R. B. Foote, ‘Mr H. B. Foote’sWork’, p. 204, fn.

2.

50. R. B. Foote, ‘Mr H. B. Foote’s Work’.


52. R. B. Foote, ‘Notes on the Results’, p. 230.


54. Although see Murty and Reddy; Prasad.


56. R. B. Foote, ‘Notes on the Results’.



59. R. B. Foote, ‘Mr H. B. Foote’s Work’, p. 203; ‘Notes

on the Results’, p. 234.



Results’.




65. R. B. Foote, The Foote Collection, p. 118.66. R. B. Foote, ‘Notes on the Results’, p. 234.

67. Cammiade, ‘Notes on the Exploration’.

68. R. B. Foote, The Foote Collection, p. 111.69. R. B. Foote, The Foote Collection, p. 38.70. Cammiade, ‘Notes on the Exploration’.

71. J. C. Brown, Catalogue Raisonne of the PrehistoricAntiquities in the IndianMuseum at Calcutta (Simla:

Government Central Press, 1917), p. 2; Cammiade,

‘Prehistoric Man in India’.

72. A. C. Logan,Old Chipped Stones of India (Calcutta:Eastern Book House, 1906); Cammiade, ‘Notes on

the Exploration’.



Results’.


76. R. Lydekker, ‘Preliminary Note on the Mammalia

of the Karnul Caves’, Records of the GeologicalSurvey of India, 19 (1886), 120–22; Lydekker,

‘The Fauna of the Karnul Caves’; R. B. Foote,

The Foote Collection, p. 118; M. L. K. Murty,

‘Late Pleistocene Fauna of Kurnool Caves, South

India’, in Archaeozoological studies: Papers of theArchaeozoological Conference 1974, Held at theBiologisch-Archaeologisch Instituut of the StateUniversity of Groningen, ed. by A.T. Clason

(Amsterdam: North Holland Publishing

Company, 1975), pp. 132–38.

77. See also Murty, ‘Late Pleistocene Fauna’.

78. Lydekker, ‘The Fauna of the Karnul Caves’, p. 25.

79. See also Prasad.

80. For an example of such environmental reconstruc-

tions, see Murty, ‘Late Pleistocene Fauna’.

81. Lydekker, ‘Preliminary Note on the Mammalia of

the Karnul Caves’, p. 122.

82. Logan, p. 41; R. B. Foote, The Foote Collection, p.119.83. R. B. Foote, ‘Notes on the Results’.


85. A. Deshpande-Mukherjee, M. L. K. Murty and G. L.

Badam, ‘Terrestrial Gastropod Shell Assemblage from

the Mesolithic Cave Site of Muchchatla Chintamanu

Gavi in the Kurnool District, Andhra Pradesh’, Manand Environment, 30 (2005), 86–93 (p. 86).

86. For example, discussion made by Logan.

87. Cammiade, ‘Notes on the Exploration’; L. A.

Cammiade, ‘Evolution of Palaeolithic Art in

India’, Man in India, 7 (1927), 105–11; Cammiade,

‘Prehistoric Man in India’.

88. Cammiade, ‘Prehistoric Man in India’.

89. Cammiade, ‘Prehistoric Man in India’. For Taung

fossils in Africa, see R. Dart, ‘Australopithecusafricanus: The Man-ape of South Africa’, Nature,

18 M. Haslam et al.


115 (1925), 195–99 . For Neanderthals in Europe,

see W. King, ‘The Reputed Fossil Man of the

Neanderthal’, Quarterly Journal of Science, 1

(1864), 88–97. For Homo erectus in East Asia,

see E. Dubois, Pithecanthropus erectus, einemenschenaehnliche Übergangsform aus Java(Batavia: Landesdruckerei, 1894).

90. Cammiade, ‘Prehistoric Man in India’, p. 8.

91. Cammiade, ‘Evolution of Palaeolithic Art’.

92. F. R. Allchin and B. Allchin.

93. Indian Archaeology 1956–57 – a Review, ed. byA. Ghosh (New Delhi: Archaeological Survey of

India, 1958), p. 9.

94. F. R. Allchin and B. Allchin, p. 303.

95. K. N. Prasad and K. K. Verma ‘The Kurnool Cave

Fauna’ (unpublished report, 1969).

96. Prasad.

97. Prasad, p. 32.

98. For example, M. J. Sharma, The Upper PalaeolithicCulture in India (Delhi: Agam Kala Prakashan,

1982); D. R. Raju and P. C. Venkatasubbaiah,

‘The Archaeology of the Upper Paleolithic Phase

in India’, in Indian Archaeology in Retrospect.Volume 1: Prehistory, ed. by S. Settar and

R. Korisettar (New Delhi: Manohar, 2002), pp.

85–109; M. L. K. Murty, ‘Upper Palaeolithic

Cultures’, in Pre- and Protohistoric AndhraPradesh up to 500 BC, ed. by M. L. K. Murty

(Chennai: Orient Longman, 2003), pp. 50–63.

99. M. L. K. Murty, ‘A Late Pleistocene Cave Site in

Southern India’, Proceedings of the AmericanPhilosophical Society, 118 (1974), 196–230. See also

Murty and Reddy; M. L. K. Murty, ‘Recent Research

on the Upper Palaeolithic Phase in India’, Journal ofField Archaeology, 6 (1979), 301–20.

100. For the nomenclature decided upon at the first

conference on Asian Archaeology, see Murty,

‘Recent Research on the Upper Palaeolithic’.

101. Murty, ‘A Late Pleistocene Cave Site’.

102. Murty, ‘A Late Pleistocene Cave Site’, p. 225.

103. Murty, ‘A Late Pleistocene Cave Site’.

104. Murty and Reddy.

105. Murty and Reddy.

106. Reddy.

107. M. Petraglia and others, ‘Human Occupation,

Adaptation and Behavioral Change in the

Pleistocene and Holocene of South India: Recent

Investigations in the Kurnool District, Andhra

Pradesh’, Eurasian Prehistory, 6 (2009), 119–66.

108. Reddy.

109. Reddy, p. 225.

110. M. Petraglia, ‘Pursuing Site Formation Processes

in India’, in Quaternary Environments andGeoarchaeology of India, ed. by S. Wadia, R.

Korisettar and V. S. Kale (Bangalore: Geological

Society of India, 1995), pp. 446–65.

111. Reddy, p. 224.

112. M. Petraglia and others, ‘Middle Palaeolithic

assemblages from the Indian subcontinent before

and after the Toba super-eruption’, Science, 317(2007), 114–16; M. Petraglia and others,

‘Population Increase and Environmental

Deterioration Correspond with Microlithic

Innovations in South Asia ca. 35,000 years ago’,

Proceedings of the National Acadamy of Science,USA, 106 (2009), 12261–66; C. Clarkson and

others, ‘The Oldest and Longest Enduring

Microlithic Sequence in India: 35 000 years of

Modern Human Occupation and Change at the

Jwalapuram Locality 9 rockshelter’, Antiquity, 83(2009), 326–48.

113. For the latter, see also Petraglia and others,

‘Human Occupation, Adaptation and Behavioral

Change’.

114. Petraglia and others, ‘Human Occupation,

Adaptation and Behavioral Change’.

115. F. R. Allchin and B. Allchin.


117. Petraglia and others, ‘Human Occupation,

Adaptation and Behavioral Change’.



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