After the Harappan civilization we have a sequence of Chalcolithic cultures which span the second millennium BC and extend geographically from the Banas and Berach basins northeast of Udaipur through Malwa and into western Maharashtra up to the Bhima valley. Stratigraphy at key sites such as Dangwada and Kayatha near Ujjain and Daimabad on the Pravara shows that the Kayatha culture was succeeded by the Banas, Malwa and Jorwe cultures in turn. These cultures exhibit some similarities in subsistence economies, house form, flaked stone tools, and limited use of copper. Thus it is possible to consider a process of cultural development and transmission of ideas for about a millennium along the important marshland of west-central India which gave access to the productive basins of the Krishna and Tungabhadra where settlements of the southern Neolithic flourished.