| Abstract: |
Survey in the upper reaches of the Yarkhun valley (Chitral district, northern Pakistan), on the southern slopes of the Hindu Kush range, led to the discovery of six sites yielding lithic industries at altitudes between 3000 and 4000 m. These lithic series bear common features. Technologically they appear archaic, for they just consist of coarsely trimmed cobbles or chips collected from close surroundings. The collection, however, satisfies some selection criteria based on shape and raw material (quartz, quartzite, amphibolite, sometimes marble). There is no process of core reduction for producing flakes. Typologically, most of the tools look like axes of various shapes, but with smooth rather than sharp edges
there are also choppers and some smaller tools like notches and end-scrapers with a very particular form of bipolar retouch. According to their geomorphological situation and referring to the chronology established in the neighboring range of Karakoram, these industries belong to a time period between 8000 and 3000 BP. They are contemporary with the Neolithic and related to a tradition of pebble tools characteristic of the sub-Himalayan belt from the Lower Palaeolithic to the late Neolithic. These new sites in the Hindu Kush, in association to those in the Pamir (Tajikistan), in the Siwaliks (Pakistan, India, Nepal), and maybe further east along the southern fridges of the Himalayas, raise the question of cultural isolation of the mountain populations from the plain populations. At high altitudes, environmental or behavioural factors might have delayed the introduction of technological innovations as well as the neolithisation process.
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