V.K.

Vinod

1 BRICKS BEADS AND BONES

HARAPPAN CIVILIZATION

Time line 1- Major Periods in Early Indian Archaeology

2 million BP Lower Palaeolithic

80,000 Middle Palaeolithic
35000 Upper Palaeolithic
12000 Mesolithic
10000 Neolithic
6000 Chalcolithic
2600 BCE Harappan civilisation
1000 BCE Use of iron
600BCE-400 CE Early historic

Introduction
• Indus valley/Harappan Civilisation was a Bronze Age
civilisation (3300-1300 BCE) in the north western
regions of South Asia(India, Pakistan, Afghanistan)

• The Indus Valley Civilisation is also named the

Harappan civilisation after Harappa

• Harappa was the first site to be excavated in the

1921

• Harappan civilization flourished in the basins of

the Indus River.
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• Harappan period witnessed the First urbanisation in

India.

Sources

• Archaeological evidences (remains of houses,

pots, ornaments, tools and seals)

The Harappan seal

➢ The Harappan seal is the most distinctive artefact

of the Harappan civilisation.

➢ Made of a stone called steatite, seals often

contain animal motifs and signs from a script

Harappan period

Before 2600 BCE Early Harappa culture

2600BCE to 1900 BCE Mature Harappa culture

After 1900 BCE Late Harappa culture

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Extent/ Boundary of Harappan culture

1 North Manda Jammu Kashmir India

2 South Daimabad Maharashtra India

3 East Alamgirpur Utharpradesh India

4 West Sutkagendor Baluchistan Province

Pakistan

Important Mature Harappan sites and

their Location

1 Harappa Punjab Province, Pakistan(on an old bank

of the River Ravi)
2 Mohenjodaro Larkana District of Sindh Pakistan (on
bank of Indus River)
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3 Kalibangan Rajasthan India

4 Dholovira Gujarat India
5 Lothal Gujarat India
6 Suktagendor Baluchistan Province Pakistan
7 Kotdiji Sindh, Pakistan.
8 Banawali Haryana India
9 Chanhudaro Sindh, Pakistan.
10 Nageshwar Gujarath India
11 Rangpur Gujarath India
12 Manda Jammu Kashmir India
13 Rakhigarhi Haryana India
14 Amri Sindh, Pakistan.
15 Balakot Khyber, Pakistan
16 Mitathal Haryana India
17 Ganweriwala Punjab Pakistan
18 Cholistan Punjab Pakistan
19 Shortugai Afghanistan

The term CULTURE

• Archaeologists use the term “culture” for a group of

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

• In the case of the Harappan culture, these distinctive

objects include seals, beads, weights, stone blades and
even baked bricks.
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• These objects were found from areas as far apart as

Afghanistan, Jammu, Baluchistan (Pakistan) and Gujarat

Early Harappan Culture Features

✔ Originated in the period before 2600 BCE

✔ Distinctive pottery
✔ Agriculture
✔ Pastoralism
✔ Some crafts.
✔ Small settlements
✔ No large buildings.
✔ No cities

Mature Harappan Culture features

✔ Developed in the period between 2600-1900BCE

✔ Urban culture/city life

✔ Large cities like Harappa and Mohenjodaro

✔ Civilized life

✔ belongs to bronze period

✔ known metals:Copper, Bronze,Gold,Silver

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✔ Administration

✔ Town Planning

✔ The citadel

✔ The warehouse

✔ The Great bath

✔ Drainage system

✔ Arts and Crafts

✔ Seals

✔ Script

✔ Trade
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Archaeo-botanists specialists in ancient plant

remains

Archaeo-zoologists specialists in ancient animal

(zoo- remains
archaeologists)

Mature Harappan culture

Sites and importance

1 Harappa Citadel, granary

2 Mohenjodaro Warehouse, great bath, priest
king, dancing girl

3 Cholistan, Terracotta models of the plough

Banawali
4 Kalibangan a ploughed field, fire altars

5 Shortugai Traces of canals

6 Dholavira Water reservoirs

7 Chanhudaro craft production(bead-making,

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shell-cutting, metal-working,
seal-making and weight-making.)

8 Nageshwar Shell making

9 Balakot Shell making

10 Lothal Dockyard, port city

Harappa
✔ Harappa was destroyed by brick robbers.

✔ Alexander Cunningham noted that the amount of brick

taken from the ancient site was enough to lay bricks
for “about 100 miles” of the railway line between
Lahore and Multan.

Mohenjodaro

✔ means 'mound of dead'

Subsistence Strategies of Harappan people

1.Agriculture : Wheat, barley, lentil, chickpea

and sesame, Millets:(Gujarat)
rice(Lothal, Rangpur)
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2.Domestication of animals : cattle, sheep, goat, buffalo

3.Hunting or scavenging : boar, deer and gharial

4.Fishing

5.Fowl

Food habits of Harappan people

➔ Ate plant and animal products, including

fish.

➔ Archaeologists found evidences from charred

grains and seeds.

➔ Bones of Wild species found

➔ Bones of fish and fowl are found.

Agricultural technologies of Harappa

• Oxen were used for ploughing (Representations on seals and

terracotta sculpture)
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• Terracotta models of the plough have been found at sites in

Cholistan(Pakistan) and at Banawali (Haryana).

• Evidence of a ploughed field at Kalibangan (Rajasthan)

• Ploughed field at Kalibangan had two sets of furrows suggesting

that two different crops were grown

• Traces of canals have been found at Shortughai in Afghanistan

• Water reservoirs found in Dholavira (Gujarat)

Food processing technologies of Harappa

• Processing of food required grinding equipment as well

as vessels for mixing, blending and cooking.

• These were made of stone, metal and terracotta.

• Saddle quern used for grinding cereals.

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Mohenjodaro A Planned Urban Centre

Division of cities

• Cities were divided in to two parts:

1.The Citadel
2.The Lower Town

Citadel

 A citadel or upper town is the core fortified area of a town or

city.

 It was built on the raised platform

 It situated in the Western part of city

 Consisted of large structures which functioned as administrative

buildings

 massive buildings, for example warehouse, great bath, granaries.

 Small in size as compared to the lower town

 Citadel was walled in most of the cities

 At sites such as Dholavira and Lothal the entire settlement was

fortified
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Lower town

 It was located on the lower part of the town

 It situated in the eastern part of city

 This part of the town was much larger than the citadel.

 This part of the town had the residential housing.

 Main activities of the people for example trade, craftmaking etc

were done here

 Lower city also walled

The warehouse(the great granary)

➢ Found in Mohenjodaro

➢ a massive structure found in the citadel

➢ lower part made by brick remain

➢ upper portions made of wood, decayed long ago

➢ used to preserve grains

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The Great Bath

➢ The "great bath" is the earliest public water tank in the ancient
world

➢ It was found in Mohenjodaro

➢ It was a large rectangular tank in a courtyard

➢ Surrounded by a corridor on all four sides.

➢ Two flights of steps (north and south)

➢ Tank was made watertight by setting bricks on edge and using a

mortar of gypsum.

➢ There were rooms on three sides

➢ Large well in one room(water source)

➢ Water from the tank flowed into a huge drain.

➢ Across a lane to the north lay a smaller building with eight

bathrooms

➢ Drains from each bathroom connecting to a drain that ran along

the corridor.

➢ Scholars suggest that Great bath was meant for some kind of a
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special ritual bath

Drainage system

 Harappan cities had the well planned drainage system.

 Roads and streets were laid out along an approximate “grid”

pattern, intersecting at right angles.

 Streets with drains were laid out first and then houses built along
them.

 The drains were made of mortar, lime and gypsum.

 ERNEST MACKAY noted: “It is the most complete ancient system

as yet discovered”

 Every house was connected to the street drains.

 The main channels were made of bricks set in mortar

 Channels were covered with loose bricks that could be removed

for cleaning.

 In some cases, limestone was used for the covers.

 House drains first emptied into a sump or cesspit into which solid
matter settled
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 Drainage channels had sumps for cleaning.

 At Lothal while houses were built of mud bricks, drains were

made of burnt bricks.

Domestic architecture/residential buildings in Mohenjodaro

● Houses had a courtyard, with rooms on all sides.

● Cooking and weaving done in courtyard

● No windows in the walls along the ground level(privacy

concerned).

● The main entrance does not give a direct view of the interior or
the courtyard.(privacy concerned).

● Every house had its own bathroom paved with bricks

● Bathroom connected with drains and through the wall it to the

street drains.

● Some houses have remains of staircases to reach a second storey

or the roof.

● Many houses had wells,often in a room

● Wells could be used by passers-by.

● The total number of estimated wells in Mohenjodaro was about

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700.

How Archaeologists track Social Differences?

1) By Studying burials

2) By Studying artefact(utilitarian and luxuries)

3) By Studying types of houses

Burials
 The dead were generally laid in pits.

 Differences in the burials show social differences

 In Some graves the hollowed-out spaces were lined with bricks.

 Some graves contain pottery and ornaments

 Jewellery has been found in burials of both men and women.

 An ornament of three shell rings, a jasper bead and hundreds of

micro beads was found near the skull of a male in Harappa

 In some instances the dead were buried with copper mirrors.

Artefacts
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 Artefacts are broadly classified as utilitarian and luxuries.

 The utilitarian

➔ includes objects of daily use

➔ made easily out of ordinary materials such as stone

or clay.

➔ eg: quern, pottery, needles, flesh-rubbers (body

scrubbers), etc.

 Luxuries

➔ rare objects

➔ made from costly, non-local materials or with

complicated technologies. e.g.: little pots of faïence,
Gold

➔ valuable materials concentrated in large settlements

like Mohenjodaro and Harappa

Hoards

• Hoards are objects kept carefully by people, often inside

containers such as pots.

• Such hoards can be of jewellery or coins or metal objects saved

for reuse by metalworkers.
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• If for some reason the original owners do not retrieve them, they
remain where they are left till some archaeologist finds them

• All the gold jewellery found at Harappan sites was recovered

from hoards

Craft Production
• Chanhudaro almost exclusively devoted to craft production

• Craft production includs bead-making, shell-cutting, metal-

working, seal-making and weight-making.

• materials used to make beads

✔ stones like carnelian (of a beautiful red colour),

jasper, crystal, quartz and steatite;

✔ metals like copper, bronze and gold;

✔ shell, faïence and terracotta or burnt clay.

✔ Some beads were made of two or more stones,

cemented together

✔ some of stone with gold caps.

• The shapes of beads

✔ disc- shaped, cylindrical, spherical, barrel-shaped,

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segmented.

✔ Some were decorated by incising or painting

✔ some had designs etched onto them.

• Techniques for making beads

✔ Some beads were moulded out of a paste made with

steatite powder.

✔ the red colour of carnelian was obtained by firing the

yellowish raw material and beads at various stages of
production.

✔ Nodules were chipped into rough shapes, and then

finely flaked into the final form.

✔ Grinding, polishing and drilling completed the

process.

✔ Specialised drills found at Chanhudaro, Lothal and at

Dholavira.

• Nageshwar and Balakot are specialised centres for making shell

objects including bangles

How to identify centres of craft production

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• Presence of raw material such as stone nodules, whole shells,

copper ore; tools

• Presence of unfinished objects

• Presence of rejects and waste material.

Strategies for Procuring Materials

➔ by establishing settlements where raw material

available(Nageswar, Balakot for shell)

➔ by sending expeditions to areas such as the Khetri region of

Rajasthan (for copper) and south India (for gold).

➔ By establishing trade relations with other

civilisations(Mesopotamia)

Materials and Location

Shell objects Nageshwar and

Balakot
lapis lazuli Shortugai
Afghanistan
Carnelian Lothal procured from Bharuch
Gujarat
Steatite Lothal procured from South
Rajasthan and north
Gujarat
Metal Lothal procured from Rajasthan
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Copper Khetri region of

Rajasthan
Gold South India

Transport
• Bullock carts (evidence-terracotta models)

• Ships and boats (depictions of ships and boats in seals)

• Riverine and coastal routes used

Ganeshwar-Jodhpura culture

• Ganeshwar Jodhpura Culture developed Khetri area of

Rajasthan

• They had Distinctive pottery(Non harappan)

• They had unusual wealth of Copper objects

• They supplied copper to the Harappans

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Names of places in Mesopotamian texts

Harappa Meluha
Oman Magan
Bahrain Dilmun

Contact with distant lands

• Harappans had trade relations with Mesopotamia, Oman,
Bahrain

• Evidences include Harappan seals, weights, dice and beads,

depictions of ships and boats on seals.

• Copper was also probably brought from Oman

• A distinctive type of vessel, a large Harappan jar coated with a

thick layer of black clay has been found at Omani sites.

• Harappans exchanged the contents of these vessels for Omani

copper.

• Mesopotamian texts datable to the third millennium BCE refer to

copper coming from a region called Magan

• The round “Persian Gulf” seal found in Bahrain sometimes

carries Harappan motifs.
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• Mesopotamian texts mention the products from Meluhha:

carnelian, lapis lazuli, copper, gold, and varieties of wood.

• Contact with Oman, Bahrain or Mesopotamia was by sea.

Seals and sealing

• Seals and sealing were used to facilitate long- distance
communication.

• Mouth of bag was tied on the knot was affixed some wet clay on
which one or more seals were pressed

• The sealing also conveyed the identity of the sender.

Features of Harappan script

✔ Harappan script has not deciphered yet(An enigmatic script)

✔ Scripts are depicted on seals copper tools, rims of jars, copper

and terracotta tablets, jewellery, bone rods, and an ancient
signboard
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✔ Animal motif used in the objects for those who could not read.

✔ Script contains signs between 375 and 400.

✔ The longest script containing about 26 signs.

✔ Harappan script was pictographic not alphabetic

✔ Written from right to left

Weight
• Exchanges were regulated by system of weights

• Weights are made of a stone called chert

• Shape generally cubical with no markings.

• The lower denominations of weights were binary (1, 2, 4,8, 16,

32, etc. up to 12,800)

• The higher denominations followed the decimal system.

Ancient Authority
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• Some think there was a single ruler in Harappa

• Some feel there was no single ruler but several rulers

• Some archaeologists are of the opinion that Harappan society had no

rulers

Why there was an authority or administration?(Indirect

evidences of administration)

● The similarity in artefacts

● Labour was mobilised for making bricks and for the construction
of massive walls and platforms.

● The evidence for planned settlements

● The standardised ratio of brick size

● The establishment of settlements near sources of raw material.

● A large building found at Mohenjodaro was labelled as a palace

by archaeologists

● A stone statue from Mohenjodaro was labelled as the “priest-

king”.
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Evidences for the End of Harappan civilisation/Late

Harappan cultures

• By c. 1800 BCE most of the Mature Harappan sites abandoned.

• Expansion of population into new settlements in Gujarat,

Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh.

• Few Harappan sites after 1900 BCE shows the disappearance of

the distinctive artefacts of the civilisation – weights, seals,
special beads.

• Writing, long-distance trade, and craft specialisation also

disappeared.

• House construction techniques deteriorated and large public

structures were no longer produced.

• Overall, artefacts and settlements indicate a rural way of life in

what are called “Late Harappan” or “successor cultures”.

Possible causes for the end of Harappan civilisation

1) Climatic change

2) Deforestation
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3) Excessive floods

4) Earth quakes

5) Epidemics

6) The shifting of rivers

7) The Drying up of rivers

8) Invasion of Aryans

Aryan invasion theory

• R.E.M. Wheeler, then Director-General of the ASI believes

Harappans were destroyed by Aryan invasion

• There was an evidence of Massacre at Deadman Lane in

Mohenjodaro

• Indra, the Aryan war-god is called Puramdara, the fort-destroyer

in Rigveda, the earliest known text in the subcontinent.

• In the 1960s, the evidence of a massacre in Mohenjodaro was

questioned by an archaeologist named George Dales
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• skulls found in Mohenjodaro do not belong same period

• There were no evidences for war between Aryans and

Harappans(only 26 deadbodies found there)

• Aryans reached in India around 1500 BCE

Sites, mounds, layers

Sites
• Archaeological sites are formed through the production, use and
discarding of materials and structures.

Mounds
• When people continue to live in the same place, their constant
use and reuse of the landscape results in the build up of
occupational debris, called a mound.

Layers

• Occupations are detected by traces of ancient materials found in

layers, which differ from one another in colour, texture and the
artefacts that are found in them.

• Abandonment or desertions, what are called “sterile layers”, can

be identified by the absence of much traces.

• Generally, the lowest layers are the oldest and the highest are
the most recent.

• The study of these layers is called stratigraphy.

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Alexander Cunningham

• Alexander Cunningham was the first Director-General of the

Archaeological Survey of India (ASI)

• The father of Indian archaeology.

• Cunningham’s main study was in the archaeology of the Early

Historic (6th century BCE -4th century. CE)

• He used the accounts left by Chinese Buddhist pilgrims

Cunningham’s confusion

• Harappan artefacts were found but Cunningham did not realise

how old these were.

• He unsuccessfully tried to place it within the time-frame with

which he was familiar.

• He thought that Indian history began with the first cities in the
Ganga valley

Daya Ram Sahni discovered Harappan seals in the early

decades of the twentieth century.
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Rakhal Das Banerji found seals at Mohenjodaro

John Marshall
• John Marshall as Director-General of the A. S. I. marked a major
change in Indian archaeology.

• He was the first professional archaeologist to work in India

• In 1924, John Marshall, announced the discovery of a new

civilisation in the Indus valley to the world.

• S.N. Roy noted in The Story of Indian Archaeology, “Marshall

left India three thousand years older than he had found her.”
.

• He had experience of working in Greece and Crete to the field.

• He was keen to look for patterns of everyday life.

• Marshall tended to excavate along regular horizontal units

• He ignored the stratigraphy of the site.

.

• All the artefacts recovered from the same unit were grouped
together

• As a result, valuable information irretrievably lost

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R.E.M. Wheeler REM

• R.E.Mortimer Wheeler became Director- General of the A.S.I. in
1944.

• Wheeler recognised importance the stratigraphy of the mound

rather than dig mechanically along uniform horizontal lines.

• He brought with him a military precision to the practice of

archaeology.

New techniques in Harappan archaeology

• There has been growing international interest in Harappan

archaeology since the 1980s

• 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.

Problems of Piecing Together the Past

1. Harappan script does not help in understanding the ancient

civilisation.

2. Organic materials such as cloth, leather, wood and reeds

generally decompose, especially in tropical regions.
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3. Only broken or useless objects would have been thrown away.

4. Valuable artefacts that are found intact were either lost in the
past or hoarded and never retrieved.

Classifying finds
• The first classification is in terms of material, such as stone,clay,
metal, bone, ivory, etc.

• The second, is in terms of function: archaeologists have to decide

whether, an artefact is a tool or an ornament, or both, or
something meant for ritual use.

• Archaeologists also try to identify the function of an artefact by

investigating the context in which it was found: was it found in a
house, in a drain, in a grave, in a kiln?

• Archaeologists have to take recourse to indirect evidence. For

instance, though there are traces of cotton at some Harappan
sites, to find out about clothing we have to depend on indirect
evidence including depictions in sculpture.

Harappan religion
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Evidences for religious belief

 Mother goddesses(terracotta figurines of women, heavily

jewelled, some with elaborate head-dresses)

 Rare stone statuary of men like Priest-king (stone statuary of

men in an almost standardised posture, seated with one hand on
the knee)

 The Great Bath(ritual bath)

 The fire altars found at Kalibangan and Lothal.

 Ritual scenes in the seals

 Unicorn (the one-horned animal) depicted on seals

 Plant motifs on seal(nature worship)

 Proto-Shiva/pashupati (a figure shown in seal seated cross-

legged in a “yogic” posture, surrounded by animals)

 conical stone objects- linga worship

Linga

A Linga is a polished stone that is worshipped as a symbol of Shiva.

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Shamans
Shamans are men or women who claim magical and healing powers as well as ability
to communicate with the other world

Problems of Interpretation; Proto shiva or yogi or

shaman?

• The Rigveda (1500-1000 BCE ) mentions a god named Rudra,

which is a name used for Shiva in later Puranic traditions

• Shiva depicted as Pashupati

• But Rudra in the Rigveda is neither depicted as Pashupati (lord

of animals in general and cattle in particular), nor as a yogi.

• Is this, then, possibly a shaman as some scholars have

suggested?

• Are conical stone objects Lingas or gamesmen?

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