The Story of the First Cities

THE HARAPPAN ARCHAEOLOGY

Civilization: means an advanced stage of human development marked
by a high level of art, religion, science, social and political organization.

For a group of object, distinctive in style that are usually found together
within a specific geographical area and period of time.

Culture : Refers to the custom, beliefs, art, music and all the other
products of human thought made by a particular group of people at a
particular time.
 HARAPPAN SEAL
• Artefacts ( Made by Human) made up of a stone called steatite, it contain animal
motifs (pictures) and signs of scripts. (seals means stamp) script is undeciphered.
 1. Beginnings
Terms, Places & Times
The Indus Valley Civilization

Area Times Style

Objects

Seals,
Afghanistan
Beads,
Jammu Early H.C
Weight, C. 2600 to
Baluchistan Mature H. C.
stone 1900 BCE
Gujarat Later H.C.
bladers,
Backed Bricks
 Beginnings
• Early Harappa : These cultures were associated with
distinctive pottery, agriculture and pastoralism and some
craft.
• Settlements: small, no large buildings.
• End of civilization: evident of large burning as well as
the abandonment of certain settlement.
• Subsistence Strategies: Early Harappa civilization and mature
Harappa civilization shared certain common elements
including Subsistence Strategies.
Extent of Harappa Civilization

Western- Sutkagandor
(Pak, Baluchistan)
Eastern – Alamgirpur
(Meerat , U.P.)
Northern- Manda, J.K.
Southern- Diamabad,
Ahmednagar,
Maharastra
 Extent of Harappa
1

Manda, J & K Chinab River

Alamgirpur, Meerut, U.P.

Baluchistan, 1
1400 KM Hindan River
Pakistan, 6
Daast River 0
0
K
M

Daimabad, Maharastra,
Godavari River
 Food Habits

Early + Mature

Archaeo-botanists Archaeo- Zoologists

Fowl, cattle,
Barley, wheat, goat, buffaloes,
lentil, chickpea, pig, fish
sesame, milets (domesticated)
found from Bones of wild
Gujarat , Rice are species like boar,
relatively rare dear and gharial
 Agricultural Technologies
• 1. Plough models – Banawali (HR), Cholistan
(Pak)
• 2. Plough Fields- Kalibangan (Raj)
• 3. Field System – 2 different crops were grown
• 4. Canals- Shortughai (Afga)
• 5. Water Reservoirs – Dholavira (Guj)
• Sites- most sites are located in semi arid lands,
where irrigation was probably required for
agriculture.
 How artefacts are identified
• Mixer : for blending, mixing and cooking.
• Made of stone, metals and terracota.
• Saddle querns – found in Mohenjodaro.
• Used to grind the cereals,
• Made of hard, gritty, igneous rocks or sandstone
• Bases are usually convex, set in the earth
• Smaller stone for pushed and rolled to and fro, 2nd was used
as a pounder (for making curries of spices and herbs)
 Mohenjo-Daro :A planned urban centre
• Most unique feature of Harappan civilization
• Development of urban centres
• Town planning proves that they lived a highly civilized and
developed life.
• First noticed by Alexander Cunningham (in 1875) first director
general of Archaeological survey of India. (Father of Indian
Archaeological)
Harappan Settlement
 Citadel & Lower Town
Citadel
1. Located higher than the lower town/
Build on raised platform of mud bricks.
2. Fairly small in size.
3. Massive building like great bath,
Granaries were situated there.
4. It is believed that the citadel was kept
away from the mudane activitiies.
5. It was walled physically separated from
lower town.
6. It was in western part.
Lower Town
1. Located on lower part of the town.
2. Much larger than the citadel
3. This part of the town had residential
Housing.
4. Mudane activities of the people for
Example trade, craft making etc were
done.
5. It was also walled
6. It was in eastern part.
Great Bath

• Rectangular
Corridor on 4 side
• 2 stairs on
North and south
leading into the
tank
• 3 sides rooms
• 1 room with large
well
• Huge drain
• 8 bathrooms
• A lane to the
north
 Bricks
• 1. Sun dried – Dry through solar energy
• 2. Baked bricks – Dry by Fire.
• Standardized ratio :
• Height = h
• Breadth= 2h
• Length= 4h
Drainage System
• Care fully planned
• Underground drains for the street
• Covered by stone slabs
• Soak pits were made of bricks
• House drain were connected with street
drain
• Drains were built on either side of the
roads.
• Small settling pools and traps were built
into the system of drainage to allow
sediment and other material to collect
while the water and smaller particles
flowed away.
• These would be cleaned out periodically.
• Drainage system was constructed on
south west drained in Arabian sea.
Domestic Architecture
• Courtyard- in centre (different
activities like cooking , weaving )
• Rooms- on all side of courtyard
• Concern for privacy- no windows
in the walls along the ground level.
• Mai n entrance does not give a
direct view of the interior.
• Wells were outside room could be
reached from outside and perhaps
used by passers by.
• Own bathroom paved with bricks.
• 700 wells in Mohenjo-Daro.
• Domestic drains connected
through wall to the street drain.
• Found remains of staircases.
(prove of second storey or roof)
Street of Harappa

•The main streets of the Harappan cities

were built according to the grid pattern.
•They were built from north to south and
from east to west.
•The houses built on the corners of streets
were rounded in order to allow the passage
of carts.
• The main road in the city of Mohenjo-
Daro was 10.5 meters wide and 800 meters
long.
The house drains relayed all the waste water
to the drains built in streets.
The streets were so designed as to cross the
main road of the city at right angles, thus
dividing the city into square or rectangular
blocks.
Sanitation System
 Tracking Social Differences
• Burials – Through the burials scholars tried to find the
differences amongst the people. (social & economical
variation , an indication of social differences)
• The dead were generally laid in pits.
• Differences in the way of buried pits.
• Hollowed out spaces were lined with bricks.
• The body was usually interred clothed shrouded or in a
wooden coffin in the north south direction in a straight
direction.
• It was important that the body did not come into contact
with the ground.
Tracking Social Differences

Some graves contain

pottery and ornaments,
perhaps indicating a
belief that these could be
used in the afterlife.

Jewellery has been found

in burials of both men
and women.
Dead were buried with
copper mirrors.
They Did not believed in
burying precious things
with the dead.
 Looking for luxuries
• Artefacts also helps to identify social differences.
• Objects like ordinary thing & objects of daily use made by stone or clay
like querns, pottery, needles, flesh rubbers (body scrubbers).
• Luxuries are those items if they are rare or made from costly, non-local
materials or with complicated technologies.
• Ex- Faience (made by ground sand or silica mixed with colour and a gum
and then fired)
• The situation becomes more complicated when we find what seem to be
articles of daily use, such as spindle whorls made of rare materials such as
faience.
Miniature pots of faience
(perfume bottle)
Found mostly in Harappa &
Mohen jodaro.
None from Kalibangan
(Small settlement)
Craft Production
 Craft Production : Chanhudaro
• Chanhudaro is a tiny settlement (less than 7 hectares) exclusively devoted to craft
production, including bead-making, shell-cutting, metal-working, seal-making and
weight-making.
• The variety of materials used to make beads is remarkable: stones like carnelian
(of a beautiful red colour), jasper, crystal, quartz and steatite, Metals like
terracotta, bronze and gold, shell, faience, terracotta or burnt clay.
• Shapes: Disc shaped, Cylindrical, Spherical, barrel- shaped segmented.
• Decoration: by incising or painting, designs etched onto them.
• Techniques for making beads- depends on materials.
• Nodules were chipped into rough shapes, and then finely flaked into the final
form.
• Grinding, polishing and drilling completed the process.
• Specialised drills have been found at Chanhudaro, Lothal and more recently at
Dholavira.
• Nageshwar (Kutch,Guj) and Balakotnsehra, Pak) were specialized centers for
making shell objects – including bangles, ladles and inlay – which were taken to
other settlements.
 Identifying the Centers of the production
• Archaeologists identified centers of craft production by raw material such
as
a) Raw Materials: stone nodules, whole shells, copper ore;
b) Tools:
c) unfinished objects
d) rejects and waste material.
• Waste is one of the best indicators of craft work.
• Sometimes, larger waste pieces were used up to make smaller objects, but
minuscule bits were usually left in the work area.
• These traces suggest that apart from small, specialized centers.

Terracota figurine
Mother Goddess
 Strategies for procuring material (Trades)
• Procured from the subcontinent and beyond:
• The Harappans procured materials for craft production in various ways.
• Terracotta toy models of bullock carts suggest that this was one important
means of transporting goods and people across land routes.
• Another strategy for procuring raw materials may have been to send
expeditions which established.
communication with local communities.
Routes for trades : Land, Riverine, Ocean.
 Strategies for procuring material
Contact with distant lands
• archaeological finds suggest that copper was also probably brought
from Oman, (Magan) on the south-eastern tip of the Arabian
peninsula.
• Mesopotamian (Iraq) texts datable to the third millennium BCE refer to
copper coming from a region called Magan, perhaps a name for Oman.
• Other archaeological finds suggestive of long-distance contacts include
Harappan seals, weights, dice and beads which suggests contacts with
regions named Dilmun (probably the island of Bahrain), Magan and
Meluhha, (the Harappan region).
• It is likely That communication with Oman, Bahrain or Mesopotamia
was by sea. Beside, we find depictions of ships and boats on seals.
• Mehula : Carnelian, Lapislazuli, Copper, Gold, Varieties of wood
• Known as land of seafarers.
Trades with other Countries
 Seals, Scripts & Weights
• Seals and sealing: were used to facilitate long distance
communication.
• Seals were utilized to make a fixing or positive engraving while
doing trade.
• Sealings were utilized as a part of antiquated circumstances
for exchange.
• The sealing also conveyed the identity of the sender.
 Weights
• Harappans had developed proper wieght and measures.
• Due to trade and exchange activities they needed standard weights and
measures.
• They need weights and measures for commercial use and for building
purposes.
• The Harappan weights, usually made of a stone called chert and marble and
generally cubical with no markings.
• Metal scale-pans have also been found.
• The weight exhibit a binary system.
• The ratio of weight is doubled 1,2,4,8,16,32,64 (lower denomination) higher
denomination followed the decimal system.
 Scripts
• An enigmatic script:
• Mysterious script and undeciphered.
• Most inscriptions are short, the longest containing about 26
signs.
• It was not alphabetical. It had too many signs.
•All the signs symbolized certain things. (between 375 and 400).
•The script was written from right to left . (known as
“Boustrophedon)
• Some seals show a wider spacing on the right and cramping on
the left, as if the engraver began working from the right and then
ran out of space.
 Ancient Authority
• Extraordinary Uniformity or Single State

• Bricks Settlement Fortification Artefacts

• There are indications of complex decisions being taken and implemented in Harappan society.

Palaces
• A large building found at Mohenjo-Daro was labelled as a palace by archaeologists but no
spectacular finds were associated with it.

Kings
• A stone statue was labelled and continues to be known as the “priest-king”.

No Rulers
• Some archaeologists are of the opinion that Harappan society had no rulers, and that everybody
enjoyed equal status.

Separate Rulers
• Others feel there was no single ruler but several, that Mohenjo-Daro had a separate ruler, Harappa
another, and so forth.
 Discovering the Hardpan Civilization
• When Harappan cities fell into ruin, people gradually forgot all about them.

Cunningham’s confusion
• The first Director-General of the ASI, Cunningham used the account left by Chinese
Buddhist pilgrims who had visited the subcontinent between the fourth and seventh
centuries CE to locate early settlements.
• Cunningham also collected, documented and translated inscriptions found during his
surveys. He also thought that recovered atrefacts had cultured value.
• A site like Harappa, which was not part of the itinerary of the Chinese pilgrims and was
not known as an Early Historic city.
• A Harappan seal was given to Cunningham by an Englishman. He noted the object, but
unsuccessfully tried to place it within the time-frame with which he was familiar.
• it is not surprising that he missed the significance of Harappa.
 A new old civilization
• Seals were discovered at Harappa by Daya Ram Sahani in the early
decades of the 20th century.
• Rakhal Das Banerji found similar seals at Mohenjo-Daro.
• In 1924, John Marshall, Director-General of the ASI, announced the
discovery of a new civilization in the Indus valley to the world.
• It was then that the world knew not only of a new civilization, but also of
one contemporaneous with Mesopotamia.
• Marshall tended to excavate along regular horizontal units, measured
uniformly throughout the mound, ignoring the stratigraphy of the site.
This meant that all the artefacts recovered from the same unit were
grouped together, even if they were found at different stratigraphic layers.
• As a result, valuable information about the context of these finds was
irretrievably lost.
 New Techniques and questions
• In 1994 R.EM. Wheeler rectified this problem. He suggested to
follow the stratigraphy of the mound rather than dig mechanically
along uniform horizontal lines.
• After the partition of sub continent the major sites are now in
Pakistan territory.

• Since the 1980s, there has also been growing international interest
in Harappan archaeology.
• Specialists from the subcontinent and abroad have been jointly
working at both Harappa and Mohenjodaro.
• They are using modern scientific techniques including surface
exploration to recover traces of clay, stone, metal and plant and
animal remains as well as to minutely analyse every scrap of
available evidence. These explorations promise to yield interesting
results in the future.
 Major developments in Harappan Archaeology
• Nineteenth century 1875 Report of Alexander Cunningham on Harappan
seal
• Twentieth century 1921 M.S. Vats begins excavations at Harappa
• 1925 Excavations begin at Mohenjodaro
• 1946 R.E.M. Wheeler excavates at Harappa
• 1955 S.R. Rao begins excavations at Lothal
• 1960 B.B. Lal and B.K. Thapar begin
• excavations at Kalibangan
• 1974 M.R. Mughal begins explorations in
• Bahawalpur
• 1980 A team of German and Italian archaeologists
• begins surface explorations at Mohenjodaro
• 1986 American team begins excavations at Harappa
• 1990 R.S. Bisht begins excavations at Dholavira
 Problems of Piecing Together the Past
• it is not the Harappan script that helps in understanding the
ancient civilization.
• It is material evidence that allows archaeologists to better
reconstruct Harappan life.
• This material could be pottery, tools, ornaments, household
objects, etc.
• Organic materials such as cloth, leather, wood and reeds
generally decompose, especially in tropical regions. What
survive are stone, burnt clay (or terracotta), metal, etc.
• Valuable artefacts that are found intact were either lost in
past or hoarded and never retrive.
 Classifying finds
• One simple principle of classification is in terms of material
such as stone, clay, metal, bone, ivory, etc.
• The second, and more complicated, is in terms of function:
• archaeologists have to decide whether, for instance, an
artefact is a tool or an ornament, or both, or something meant
for ritual use.
• Resemblance with present day things :beads, querns, stone
blades, pots…
• Place were it found: in a house, in a drain, in a grave, in a kiln?
• Indirect evidence: traces of cotton at some Harappan sites, to
find out about clothing. depictions in sculpture (Priest King,
Mother Goddess).
• Archeologist have to develop frames of refferences.
 Problems of interpretation
Religious Beliefs:
• Terracota figurines of women- heavily jewelled, head dresses, Regardd as
Mother Goddesses.
• Priest King – Stone statuary of men in an almost standadised posture, sealed
with one hand on the knee.
• Great Bath and Fire Altar- Ritual significance
• Polished Conical stone – Lingas or Game Stone
• Plant motifs - indicate nature worship.
• Unicorn- one horned animal depicted on Seal, seems to be mythical.
• Yogi: a figure shown on seal, seated cross-legged (yogic posture), surrounded
by animals, regarded as a depiction of ‘Proto Shiva’. (major deities of
Hinduism)
More Speculative- How?
• Unlike Shiva, Rudra in Rigveda (1500BCE-1000BCE)neither depicted as
Pashupati nor as Yogi.
• Shaman- a person with magical and healing power
can communicate with other world.
 The End of the Civilization
• Several explanations for the decline of Harappa
• Environmental problems
• Climate change
• Deforestation
• Excessive floods
• Shifting or drying up of rivers
• Overuse of land

• Abandonment of the population

C. 1800 BCE most of the Mature Harappan sites such as Cholistan had been
abandoned.

Emergence of new sites

Gujarat, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh.

Transformation of Culture
• The end was evidenced by the disappearance of seals, the script, distinctive beads
and pottery, the shift from a standardized weight system to the use of local weights;
and the decline and abandonment of cities.