Beyond the Rohri Hills Plateau: A Comparative Technological Analysis of Palaeolithic Scraper Workshops at Veesar Valley and the Rohri Hills, Sindh, Pakistan

Abstract

The Rohri Hills of Upper Sindh are one of South Asia’s best-known chert-procurement and lithic-production landscapes, yet nearby Veesar Valley preserves a workshop record whose technological emphasis differs from the classic plateau model. This paper compares Veesar Valley with Palaeolithic workshop evidence from the Rohri Hills to evaluate how similar raw-material opportunities were translated into different reduction strategies, formal-tool outputs and landscape organizations. The Veesar dataset comprises 270 identifiable lithics from 98 mapped workshops. Ninety scrapers form 33.3% of identifiable lithics; side scrapers dominate the scraper class (n=76; 84.4%) and occur in 37 of 51 lithic-bearing workshops. Cortex values on 118 artifacts include low, intermediate and high categories in comparable frequencies, supporting multi-stage local reduction when integrated with cores, flakes, crested elements, blades, picks and hammerstones. Published Rohri Hills research documents a longer and technologically diverse sequence, including Acheulean workshops, Late/Upper Palaeolithic production and extensive Indus-period quarrying and blade manufacture. Field comparison records larger, more heavily weathered and more extensively decorticated artifacts in parts of the Rohri comparative sample, whereas Veesar preserves smaller artifacts, partial cortex and a conspicuous scraper component. These contrasts are treated as testable hypotheses rather than universal distinctions. The comparison shows that raw-material abundance alone did not determine technological organization. Veesar Valley is best interpreted as a scraper-rich, multi-stage workshop landscape within the wider Rohri–Thar chert province, while the Rohri Hills represent a long-duration extraction and production system. The study establishes a comparative framework for future stratified, metric and geoarchaeological testing.