Qualla: Stone Circles of Junapani

Stone Circles of Junapani: Introduction

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Somewhere around 1000 BC, while the Vedic civilization was composing hymns to the east and Mediterranean empires were trading bronze for iron, people on the plains north of present-day Nagpur were arranging stones into circles and burying their dead beneath cairns of rock. They left no written language, no monumental architecture, no names. What they left instead were roughly 300 stone circles scattered across the landscape near the village of Junapani, each one a few meters across, many still holding the iron tools and copper bells placed there three millennia ago. The Archaeological Survey of India has designated the site a monument of national importance, and the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research has studied its cup-marked stones for clues to an astronomical purpose that the builders themselves can no longer explain.

Stone Circles of Junapani: Iron and Bone Beneath the Cairns

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

When J. H. Rivett-Carnac first excavated Junapani in 1879, he found what archaeologists would come to call an "iron-using" culture. The burials yielded daggers, flat axes with cross-ring fasteners, hoes, rings, bracelets, horse bits, chisels with long blades, and pointed tongs th...

Stone Circles of Junapani: Reading the Cup Marks

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

What sets Junapani apart from other megalithic sites in India is the cup marks carved into certain stones within the circles. Small, scooped depressions in the rock surface, they appear at specific locations with specific orientations. The Tata Institute of Fundamental Research u...

Stone Circles of Junapani: Central India's Northern Megalithic Frontier

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Junapani sits on the highway to Katol, forming the northern fringe of central India's megalithic distribution. It is the second-largest site in the region, with 150 documented circles out of 51 known sites around Nagpur and 89 across the wider Vidarbha region. The megaliths here ...

Stone Circles of Junapani: Silence and Persistence

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The stone circles of Junapani do not draw crowds. They sit on open ground near a highway, unremarkable at first glance, easy to drive past without knowing what lies beneath the soil. But that quietness is part of what makes the site extraordinary. For three thousand years, these ...