Settled life based on food production first began in the northwest.
Here man progressed from incipient food production to the foundation of
Neolithic -Chalcolithic village cultures. In Ahar (Banas valley of
Rajasthan), Maheshwar-Navdatoli in the Narmada valley, Nagda in the
Chambal valley, Daimabad, Chandoli and various other sites of the northern
Deccan early farmers were living in open villages and cultivating crops
which included wheat, several kinds of legumes or rice as at Chirand in
south Bihar.
In the south, in central and eastern Deccan the economy was predominantly pastoral and the Neolithic -Chalcolithic influence can be seen at Piklihal and Tekkalakota in Karnataka or Utnur and Nagarjunakonda in AP. This period continued from about 2000 BC to about the middle of the first millennium BC although in certain areas the advent of a new metallic technology seems to have taken place earlier.