The antiquities of Kangra were first noticed in the 1840s and in the last quarter of that century their basic details were laid down by Alexander Cunningham and George Buhler. Soon afterwards these details were put on a more secure footing by J. Ph. Vogel, H.L. Shuttleworth, H. Hargreaves and Hirananda Shastri. In recent years Kangra has been put on the prehistoric map of India by B.B. Lal, G.C. Mohapatra and R.V. Joshi. The Delhi University exploration in Kangra in March 1980 was intended to follow up the earlier prehistoric discoveries, to try to locate a Neolithic settlement and to find out if the Harappans spread into this attractive valley from the side of Jammu. The result has been negative in both cases but early historic pottery could be located, for the first time in this region, and a systematic assessment of all types of historical antiquities was possible. The present volume is a field-report based on this assessment. This is accompanied by a comprehensive survey of the archaeological literature on the western Himalayas and a metallographic analysis of an iron knife (dated c.200 B.C.) which has shown evidence of quenching.
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