BILLA SURGAM 1: Charnel House

Herbert Daniel Gebauer - 06/01/2018

Upon entering the cañons (FOOTE 1884a: 28) of Billa Surgam by walking upstream along the stream bed and heading south (note 1), the first side passage encountered on the left-hand (east) side is the northern cave (FOOTE, R B 1884a: 29) which has been christened Charnel House Cave (FOOTE, R B 1884b: 200). ETYMOLOGY: Charnel house (English, noun, historical) a building or vault in which corpses or bones are piled. Origin (mid 16th century) from -charnel- (Middle English), a burying place, from Old French, from -carnale- (medieval Latin), from -carnalis- (late Latin), relating to flesh, from -caro, carn-- (Latin), flesh. IDENTITY: The day after I commenced excavating [1884, probably January or February] at Billa Surgam, a number of people from the adjacent hamlet of Kotal came over to look at my proceedings, and one of them, a very old man, volunteered the information that he remembered Newbold's visit, and that his excavation was made just a little to the west of mine. He added that Nwbold remained about three weeks at Billa Surgam (FOOTE, R B 1884a: 29 footnote 2). CAVE DESCRIPTION 1981: Most of the accessible part of the Charnel House has been excavated (NEWBOLD, T J 1844; FOOTE 1884a, 1884b, 1885) and the original level of the removed infillings is still visible (1981.12.29 personal observation) some 3 m or 4 m above the current floor level. The west-facing cave entrance is -- depending on where one sees the tributary passage entering the cañon of the main passage -- about 10 m or 20 m wide and gives access to some 30 m of horizontal cave passage (aligned ESE - WNW), which decreases in size and leads after about 25 m (or so) to a star-shaped well (in plan) (FOOTE, R B 1885: 231) or cross-rift, which had been excavated to a depth of 58 feet 6 inches (FOOTE, Robert B 1885: 230-231) or 17.83 m below the level of the undisturbed cave floor (note 2). CAVE DESCRIPTION 1883-1884: This northern cave is 70 to 80 feet [21.3 to 24.4 m] high [note 3] and 32 feet [9.75 m] wde at its mouth, and decreases in height to 4 feet [1.2 m], 86 feet [26.2 m] from the mouth. Its extreme end is formed by a small passage, too narrow and too low to be followed up by an adult. Through this passage and a number of small clefts in the sides the mass of red cave earth filling the bottom of the cave was doubtless washed in. The cave earth as far as excavated showed few pebbles washed in from above, but masses of limestone, often of large size, have fallen from the roof in such numbers as to add very greatly to the labour of excavation in some parts. The floor of the cave when I first entered it consisted of a loose blackish-grey soil, largely composed of the droppings of blue pigeons and small animals living in the cave. This layer was thickest at the upper or east end of the cave, and thinned out with the slope of the ground westward. Its greatest thickness was about 4 feet, and it contained a few traces of human beings having inhabited the cave [note 4] … In several pars of the cave the black soil was found to be full of bones of small animals, birds, lizards, frogs, and of exuviae of insects and myriapoda which appeared to be derived from the castings of predacious birds. I made a full collection of these for purposes of comparison with the numerous bones of small animals, which, according to Newbold's account, abounded in the red cave earth below. These bones from the upper layer were in no way fossilized, -- indeed many of them were quite fresh. On removing the surface layer a bed of loose loamy red soil was exposed, which had at many points been manifestly disturbed, but to no great depth. Resting on this disturbed surface close to the north wall of the cave at a spot 21 feet [6.4 m] westward from the mouth of the small passage which forms the east end of the cave, was a small number of human bones not mineralized but deprived of their animal matter. Among the bones, which were all much broken, are fragments of a skull, teeth, ribs, &c. (FOOTE R B 1828: 28-29). CAVE DESCRIPTION 1884-1885: In the front portion of the Charnel House cave, where Lieutenant [Henry Bruce] Foote had in his first exploration reached a depth of 27 1/2 feet [8.38 m], he descended through 8 feet [2.44 m] of stiff grey marl to the bottom of the cave at a total depth of 35 1/2 feet [10.8 m]. No bones were found in this grey marl. At the eastern or inner extremity of the Charnel House the passage widened out somewhat as followed eastward, and at the crossing of two master-joints in the limestone formed a star-shaped well (in plan), from which 18 feet [5.5 m] of stiff red-clayey earth had been removed. At a depth of 27 feet [8.23 m] the passage widened out in the cross joint and could have entirely cleared; but as this would have involved costly timbering to shore up the sides, and the cave earth was very sterile, Lieutenant Foote judged it wiser simply to sink a pit in the centre of the cave, which was from 5 to 6 feet [1.52 m to 1.83 m] wide. The sinkig was effected in depths of a yard each till a depth of 58 feet 6 inches [17.83 m] was reached when the passage contracted suddenly from 5 feet [1.5 m] to 6 inches [15 cm] and could be followed no further [note 4]. The results obtained by the excavation of the little cave [unspecified: Purgatory Cave?] on the south side of the Chapter House [sic!] were small, the only point of real interest was that of a large human molar in a bed of red cave earth about 4 feet [1.2 m] below the surface, the ony human bone found anywhere in the true cave earth. The red cave earth was overlaid by black gravel from 1 to 1 1/2 foot [0.3 m to 0.45 m] thick (FOOTE, R B 1885: 230-231). CAVE DESCRIPTION 1972: KENNEDY (1977: 101 fig. 2) gives a photograph (taken in 1972), which shows parts of the daylight-lit scree slope and eastern cave walls illuminated by the sun shining into the northernmost ceiling window and is said to show Purgatory and Charnal [sic! qua: Charnel] House Caves seen from mouth of Cathedrl Cave. Debris moved by excavators is in middle foreground. CULTURAL HISTORY - Pleistocene zooarchaeology: How did anatomically modern humans live and subsist in southern India after Toba? To what extent were global changes in Pleistocene climates during MIS 4-2 expressed in southern India, and how did people respond to these changing circumstances? Zooarchaeological studies of assemblages from the Billasurgam Caves (Cathedral and Charnal House Caves, and others) and Jurreru Valley rockshelters (Jwalapuram 9 and others) are starting to provide some preliminary answers to these questions (MIRACLE 2010: 9) The site chosen for cryptotephra investigation was Charnel House Cave (CHC). This cave was excavated to bedrock across most of its extent in the 1880s (Foote 1884a), leaving only a block of original sediment standing at the entrance (Haslam et al. 2010b). The remaining sedimentary sequence consists of over 4.5 m of clast-supported, weathered, angular to sub-rounded limestone cobble an boulder rubble in a yellowish-red to brown silty matrix, overlain by about 1.3 m of relatively undifferentiated yellowish-red silts, in turn overlain by 0.8-0.9 m of poorly sorted pebble-to-boulder grade conglomerate with likely mixed sediments at the very top. The interface between each of the cobble beds and the intervening silt layer is reasonably distinct and sharp, representing two dramatic changes in the sediment depositional regime. The limestone clasts are primarily derived from significant roof-fall events, and as the roof of the site is tens of metres high there are a number of naturally-fractured limestone pieces throughout the upper and lower rubble-beds. While this makes identification of cultural products difficult, there are presently no indisputably manufactured lithic items recovered from Charnel House Cave. A large number of microfaunal remains have been collected from the CHC sequence, along with a lesser number of macrofaunal skeletal elements, and these are curretly being analysed for evidence of human processing (LANE et al. 2011: 1821-1822). boulder rubble in a yellowish-red to brown silty matrix, overlain by about 1.3 m of relatively undifferentiated yellowish-red silts, in turn overlain by 0.8-0.9 m of poorly sorted pebble-to-boulder grade conglomerate with likely mixed sediments at the very top. The interface between each of the cobble beds and the intervening silt layer is reasonably distinct and sharp, representing two dramatic changes in the sediment depositional regime. The limestone clasts are primarily derived from significant roof-fall events, and as the roof of the site is tens of metres high there are a number of naturally-fractured limestone pieces throughout the upper and lower rubble-beds. While this makes identification of cultural products difficult, there are presently no indisputably manufactured lithic items recovered from Charnel House Cave. A large number of microfaunal remains have been collected from the CHC sequence, along with a lesser number of macrofaunal skeletal elements, and these are curretly being analysed for evidence of human processing (LANE et al. 2011: 1821-1822).