‘Soanian cultural’ tradition (Answer in 150 words)

- ‘Soanian cultural’ tradition (Answer in 150 words)
Introduction
The Soanian is the chopper-chopping tradition of the Siwalik belt, named by de Terra and Paterson in 1939 from the Soan valley of the Potwar plateau.

Body
1. Technique and typology: quartzite river cobbles worked by direct hard-hammer flaking. The types are unifacial choppers, bifacial chopping tools, discoids and cobble scrapers, with flakes from plain and later prepared cores. Handaxes and cleavers are effectively absent.
2. Setting and sites: Siwalik hills and river terraces — Chauntra, Adiala and Jalalpur on the Soan; in India Guler in the Beas-Banganga valley, the Sirsa valley and the Jammu Siwaliks. The assemblages were tied to terraces T1 to T4 and to the Kashmir glacial sequence.
3. Dating and dispute: that terrace framework, and the Pre-Soan to Late Soan sequence built on it, is now discarded. Most assemblages are Middle to Late Pleistocene, contemporary with or later than the Acheulian, and Acheulian handaxes at Atbarapur break Movius's line.

Conclusion
It is best read as a raw-material and functional facies of the Indian Palaeolithic, not the culture of a separate people.