Chapter 1: BRICKS, BEADS AND BONES THE HARAPPAN CIVILISATION

Geographical Spread

• Regions: Finds occur in Afghanistan, Baluchistan, Sind and Punjab in Pakistan, and in Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra in India.

Urban layout

• Urban centre: Mohenjo-daro is a major example of the Harappan civilisation’s planned cities; Harappa was the first site discovered.
• Two sections: The smaller, higher Citadel and larger, lower Lower Town were physically separated by walls.
• Citadel platform: Its elevation came from buildings constructed on mud-brick platforms; the Lower Town was also walled.
• Construction scale: Platforms formed building foundations. At roughly $1\,m^3$ of earth per labourer per day, their construction required an estimated four million person-days.
• Planned space: Buildings were confined to the prepared platforms, suggesting the settlement was planned before construction began.
• Standard bricks: Sun-dried and baked bricks followed a standard ratio: length : breadth : height = $4:2:1$, used across Harappan settlements.

• Brick robbing: Harappa was badly damaged as bricks from its ancient structures were removed and reused.
• Alexander Cunningham: In 1875, the first Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) observed that enough bricks had been taken to lay about 100 miles of railway line between Lahore and Multan.
• Preservation: In contrast to Harappa, Mohenjo-daro was much better preserved.

Street planning and drainage

• Street pattern: Roads and streets followed an approximate grid, intersecting at right angles.
• Order of construction: Streets and their drains appear to have been laid out before houses were built along them.
• House connection: To discharge wastewater into street drains, each house needed at least one wall along a street.
• Extensive system: Drains connected houses to street channels and were found in large cities and smaller settlements too.

• Common pattern: Many Harappan settlements had a small, high western section and a larger, lower eastern section.
• Dholavira and Lothal: The whole settlement was fortified, and walls also separated sections within the town.
• Lothal’s Citadel: It stood on a raised area but was not walled off.

Features of houses

• Courtyard houses: Many homes had rooms arranged around a central courtyard, likely used for activities such as cooking and weaving, especially in hot, dry weather.
• Privacy: Ground-level walls had no windows, and the main entrance did not give a direct view into the interior or courtyard.
• Bathrooms: Each house had a brick-paved bathroom, with a drain passing through the wall to connect to street drainage.
• Upper levels: Staircase remains show that some houses had a second storey or roof access.
• Wells: Many houses had wells, sometimes in a room accessible from outside and possibly usable by passers-by. Mohenjo-daro had an estimated 700 wells.

Construction and functioning

• Mackay’s assessment: Ernest Mackay called it “the most complete ancient system as yet discovered.”
• Main drains: Built from bricks set in mortar and covered with loose bricks that could be lifted for cleaning; limestone covers were used in some cases.
• House drains: Wastewater first entered a sump or cesspit, where solid matter settled; the remaining water flowed into the street drain.
• Cleaning access: Long channels had sumps at intervals to assist cleaning.
• Maintenance evidence: Heaps of mostly sandy debris beside drains suggest that cleared material was not always removed.
• Small settlements: The drainage system was not limited to major cities. At Lothal, houses used mud bricks while drains were made of burnt bricks.

Warehouse and Great Bath

• Public-purpose evidence: The Citadel contained structures likely used for special public purposes, including a warehouse and the Great Bath.
• Warehouse: A massive building; its surviving lower portions were brick, while its upper parts were probably wooden and decayed.
• Great Bath: A large rectangular tank in a courtyard, surrounded by a corridor on all four sides.
• Waterproofing and access: Two flights of steps on the north and south led into the tank. Bricks set on edge and gypsum mortar made it watertight.
• Water supply and drainage: Rooms stood on three sides, including one with a large well; water from the tank flowed into a large drain.
• Nearby bathrooms: A smaller building north across a lane had eight bathrooms—four on each side of a corridor—with drains joining a corridor drain.
• Likely use: Its distinctive design and Citadel location led scholars to suggest that the Great Bath was used for a special ritual bath.

Distribution, gold and hoards

• Faience pots: Miniature pots, perhaps used as perfume bottles, are found mostly at Mohenjodaro and Harappa, and none are reported from small settlements such as Kalibangan.
• Gold: It was rare and probably precious; all gold jewellery found at Harappan sites was recovered from hoards.
• Hoards: Carefully stored objects, often kept in pots, could include jewellery or metal objects saved for reuse by metalworkers.
• Archaeological significance: If owners did not retrieve a hoard, its contents remained where deposited and could later be discovered.

Bead-making techniques

• Steatite: This soft stone was easy to work; beads could also be moulded from a paste of steatite powder, allowing varied shapes.
• Hard stones: These were shaped into more geometric forms. How steatite microbeads were made remains uncertain.
• Carnelian colour: Firing the yellowish raw material and beads at different production stages produced the red colour.
• Tools: Specialised drills used in bead production have been found at Chanhudaro, Lothal and Dholavira.

Specialised centres and exchange

• Shell-working centres: Coastal Nageshwar and Balakot specialised in shell objects such as bangles, ladles and inlay.
• Distribution: Shell products were taken to other settlements; finished goods such as beads from Chanhudaro and Lothal were likely transported to urban centres such as Mohenjodaro and Harappa.

Archaeological indicators

• Evidence sought: Raw materials such as stone nodules, whole shells and copper ore; tools; unfinished objects; rejects; and waste.
• Waste: One of the strongest indicators of craft production. Cutting stone or shell leaves discarded fragments at the production site.
• Reuse: Larger waste pieces could be used to make smaller objects, while minuscule fragments were usually left in the work area.
• Where production occurred: Craft work took place in small specialised centres and in large cities such as Mohenjodaro and Harappa.

Expeditions and regional contacts

• Expeditions: Harappans may have sent groups to Khetri in Rajasthan for copper and to south India for gold.
• Local communities: Such journeys likely created communication and exchange with people in resource-rich regions.
• Evidence of contact: Steatite microbeads and other Harappan artefacts have occasionally been found in these areas.
• Ganeshwar-Jodhpura culture: The Khetri region had distinctive non-Harappan pottery and many copper objects; its inhabitants may have supplied copper to the Harappans.

Mesopotamia and Gulf connections

• Mesopotamian texts: Texts from the third millennium BCE mention copper from Magan, probably Oman; copper found at Mesopotamian sites also contains traces of nickel.
• Archaeological finds: Harappan seals, weights, dice and beads indicate long-distance contacts.
• Named regions: Mesopotamian records refer to Dilmun (probably Bahrain), Magan (perhaps Oman) and Meluhha (possibly the Harappan region).
• Meluhha’s products: Texts associate it with carnelian, lapis lazuli, copper, gold and varieties of wood.
• Seafaring evidence: Mesopotamian texts describe Meluhha as a land of seafarers; seals also depict ships and boats.
• Bull motif: A Mesopotamian cylinder seal has a bull motif thought by some to derive from the Indus region.

What changed?

• Abandonment: By c. 1800 BCE, most Mature Harappan sites in areas such as Cholistan had been abandoned.
• New settlements: Population expanded into Gujarat, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh.
• Material culture: After 1900 BCE, surviving sites show the disappearance of weights, seals and special beads; writing, long-distance trade and craft specialisation also disappeared.
• Urban life: Fewer materials were used to make fewer goods; house construction techniques deteriorated and large public structures were no longer built.
• Successor cultures: Settlements and artefacts point to a more rural way of life, known as Late Harappan or successor cultures.

Explanations for decline

• Suggested causes: Climate change, deforestation, excessive floods, shifting or drying rivers, and overuse of the landscape.
• Limits of explanations: Some causes may explain changes at particular settlements, but these explanations do not account for the collapse of the entire civilisation.
• Loss of unifying power: A strong unifying element—possibly the Harappan state—appears to have ended.
• Evidence of fragmentation: Seals, script, distinctive beads and pottery disappeared; standardised weights gave way to local weights, while cities declined or were abandoned.
• After the cities: The subcontinent did not develop new cities in a different region for over a millennium.

From skeletons to the invasion theory

• Finds at Mohenjodaro: Sixteen skeletons, with ornaments still being worn, were found in one part of the city in 1925.
• John Marshall: His 1931 account described human bones found in Deadman Lane, including an adult skeleton and fragments of a small skull.
• R.E.M. Wheeler: In 1947, he connected the skeletons and Harappan fortifications with the Rigveda’s description of Indra as *puramdara* (fort-destroyer).
• Wheeler’s conclusion: He proposed that deliberate, large-scale destruction, possibly by Aryans, completed the civilisation’s decline.

Reassessment by George Dales

• Dales’s challenge: In the 1960s, archaeologist George Dales questioned the claim of a massacre at Mohenjodaro.
• His findings: Only a couple of skeletons seemed to suggest slaughter; most were found in contexts consistent with careless or disrespectful burials.
• Key point: Re-examining archaeological evidence can overturn earlier interpretations.

Study and reported findings

• Site: Rakhigarhi, in Haryana’s Hisar district, is described as the largest Harappan city, covering about 550 hectares.
• Research: DNA from excavated skeletons was analysed by a team from Deccan College, Pune, the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad, and Harvard Medical College.
• Genome finding: The ancient Harappan genome analysed in the study lacked ancestry from steppe pastoralists or Iranian farmers.
• Reported ancestry: The study traced Harappan genetic roots to the region, back to 10,000 BCE, and reported genetic continuity with much of today’s South Asian population.
• Population contact: The study identified a small genetic contribution linked to trade and cultural contact with distant regions; it also argued that people arriving from elsewhere were absorbed into Indian society.
• Migration claim: The researchers interpreted genetic and cultural continuity as evidence against large-scale immigration by the so-called Aryans.
• Wider spread: As Harappans moved towards Iran and Central Asia, the study proposed that their genes also spread there.
• Facial reconstruction: Reconstructed male and female facial features were reported to resemble people of modern Haryana, suggesting regional continuity over 5,000 years.

Rediscovering Ruined Cities

• Forgotten cities: After Harappan cities fell into ruin, later inhabitants did not know their history.
• Artefacts surfaced: Floods, soil erosion, ploughing and digging sometimes brought ancient objects to light.

Why Cunningham Missed Harappa

• Alexander Cunningham: The first Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI); he began archaeological excavations in the mid-19th century.
• Historical focus: He mainly studied the Early Historic period, approximately the 6th century BCE to the 4th century CE, and later periods.
• Written sources: Archaeologists often used texts and inscriptions as guides. Cunningham used Chinese Buddhist pilgrims’ accounts (4th–7th centuries CE) to locate early settlements.
• His work: He collected, documented and translated inscriptions, and often sought artefacts he considered culturally valuable.
• Harappa did not fit: It was not on the pilgrims’ itineraries or known as an Early Historic city. A seal given to Cunningham by an Englishman could not be placed in his familiar time-frame.
• Limiting assumption: Like many others, Cunningham believed Indian history began with the first cities in the Ganga valley, so he missed Harappa’s significance.

Recognition of the Harappan Civilisation

• Daya Ram Sahni: Found seals at Harappa in layers much older than Early Historic levels.
• Rakhal Das Banerji: Found similar seals at Mohenjodaro. The matching finds suggested both sites belonged to one archaeological culture.
• John Marshall: As Director-General of the ASI, announced the discovery of a new civilisation in the Indus valley in 1924.
• Mesopotamian connection: Similar, previously unidentified seals found at Mesopotamian sites showed that the Harappan civilisation was contemporaneous with Mesopotamia.

Marshall’s Excavation Method

• Horizontal units: Marshall excavated in uniformly measured horizontal sections rather than following the actual layers.
• Loss of context: Finds from different stratigraphic layers could be grouped together, irretrievably losing information about where they were found.

How Archaeological Layers Form and Are Read

• Formation: Repeated occupation builds up debris; abandonment lets wind, water and erosion alter the landscape.
• Occupation traces: Layers may differ in colour, texture and the artefacts they contain; sterile layers lack such traces.
• Relative age: In general, the lowest layers are oldest and the highest are most recent.
• Use: Artefacts assigned to layers help establish a site’s cultural sequence.

Wheeler and Stratigraphic Excavation

• R.E.M. Wheeler: Became Director-General of the ASI in 1944 and corrected the problem of excavating in uniform horizontal units.
• Method: He insisted that archaeologists follow the mound’s stratigraphy, preserving the relationship between artefacts and their layers.
• Approach: Wheeler brought military precision to archaeological practice.

Changing Research Questions and Methods

• Research questions: Archaeologists study cultural sequences, why particular sites were located where they were, and what purposes artefacts served.
• Since the 1980s: International interest has grown, with specialists from the subcontinent and abroad working jointly at Harappa and Mohenjodaro.
• Modern evidence gathering: Surface exploration and scientific analysis examine traces of clay, stone, metal, plants and animals, as well as other available evidence.

Why Religious Reconstructions Remain Uncertain

• Known to unknown: Archaeologists often interpret the past by comparing it with the present or with later traditions.
• Limits of analogy: This approach is persuasive for familiar objects such as pots and querns, but more speculative when applied to religious symbols.
• Rigveda comparison: The Rigveda, compiled c. 1500–1000 BCE, mentions Rudra, a name later used for Shiva in Puranic traditions of the first millennium CE.
• Mismatch: Rigvedic Rudra is not described as Pashupati or as a yogi, so the seal figure does not clearly match the Rigvedic description.
• Open possibility: Some scholars have therefore suggested the seated figure might represent a shaman instead.