HARAPPA

HARAPPA The Indus Civilization was first discovered in the course of exploratory excavations at Harappa by Alexander Cunningham in 1856 and 1872. Major excavations between 1920 and 1934, directed by Rai Bahadur Daya Ram Sahni and Madho Sarup Vats, found that the site had been badly looted of bricks, but important inscribed seals, architecture, figurines, and sculptures were discovered that have contributed greatly to our understanding of Indus culture. Subsequently, numerous excavations were conducted by different officers of the Archaeological Survey of India and, after 1947, by the Pakistan Department of Archaeology and Museums.

Harappa is situated on a low Pleistocene terrace between two major tributaries of the Indus River, the Ravi and the ancient Beas (now the Sutlej). One-third of the ancient site is occupied by the modern city of Harappa, which is still an important regional center for agriculture and craft production. Harappa was connected by trade to Mohenjo-Daro in the south, as well as to distant regions such as Central Asia, the Persian Gulf, and Mesopotamia.

Although this is the type-site for the Harappa culture, most of the popular focus shifted to Mohenjo-Daro, where spectacular architectural remains were well preserved. Nevertheless, Harappa's most important contribution is that it is the only major city that has revealed the full sequence of occupation, beginning from the earliest farming village to the rise and eventual decline of the city. The mounded ruins of ancient Harappa consist of three large walled sectors and several smaller suburbs that cover approximately .6 square miles (150 hectares). The original settlement was probably a single village during the earliest part of the Ravi Phase, around 3500 b.c. As it grew in size, it split into two sections, and by the Kot Diji Phase (2800–2600 b.c.) there is evidence for two distinct mounds that appear to have been surrounded by separate mud-brick perimeter walls. During the Harappa Phase (2600–1900 b.c.), these walled areas were enlarged, and new perimeter walls were built to enclose each sector of the urban center. Gateways at strategic locations in the walls allowed the dominant elites in each sector to control access into and out of their neighborhoods. Economic as well as political competition probably stimulated the continuing expansion of the site during the 700 years of the Harappa Phase. Three periods of settlement growth and expansion can be defined, and these are associated with the construction of new suburbs, changes in seals and writing, new pottery forms, specialized crafts, and changing trade networks.

Excavations in the walled suburb of Mound F have revealed some of the most famous structures at the site, dating from the middle and latter part of the Harappa Phase. Discoveries of a large furnace for firing pottery, a hoard of copper tools, and a hoard of jewelry suggest that prosperous merchants and craftsmen inhabited this part of the site. The so-called granary was built around 2450 to 2200 b.c. on a massive mud-brick foundation over 164 feet (50 m) north-south and 131 feet (40 m) east-west. There is no evidence that this structure was used for storing grain or other commodities. Almost two hundred years later, we see the construction of circular brick platforms that were thought to have been used for husking grain, but re-examination of these circular platforms has not uncovered any evidence of grain or chaff. Another important set of buildings, constructed around the same time as the circular platforms, appear to have been constructed with identical floor plans and orientation as part of a housing project. Although originally referred to as workmen's quarters, these houses are substantial brick structures that could have housed merchants and traders.

During the Late Harappa Phase (1900–1300 b.c.), some areas of the city were overcrowded, possibly as a result of refugees from regions to the east, where the Sarasvati-Ghaggar-Hakra River was beginning to dry up. Harappa is the only excavated Indus site where there is strong evidence demonstrating the gradual transition from the Harappa to the Late Harappa Phase. Continuities in some technologies and art styles and changes in other aspects of technology indicate that the transition was neither abrupt nor the result of replacement by new people. However, in the end there was a major change in religion, and the Harappan extended burials were replaced by pot burials that contained the secondary burial of long bones and skulls. We know from later Vedic texts that the people who came after the Harappans spoke an Indo-Aryan language and practiced a very different religion. After the Late Harappan period, the region was not abandoned, but the upper levels of the site were destroyed, and fragments of Gupta brick architecture and sculpture dating to around a.d. 320 to 454 are all that remains of what must have been a very large Early Historic city.

Jonathan Mark Kenoyer

See alsoIndus Valley Civilization ; Mohenjo-Daro

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Kenoyer, Jonathan Mark. Ancient Cities of the Indus Valley Civilization. Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Meadow, Richard H., and Jonathan Mark Kenoyer. "Excavations at Harappa 1993: The City Walls and Inscribed Materials." In South Asian Archaeology 1993, edited by A. Parpola and P. Koskikallio. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1994.

——. "Excavations at Harappa 1994–1995: New Perspectives on the Indus Script, Craft Activities, and City Organization." In South Asian Archaeology 1995, edited by B. Allchin and R. Allchin. New Delhi: Oxford and IBH Publishing, 1997.

Possehl, Gregory L. The Indus Civilization: A Contemporary Perspective. Walnut Creek, Calif.: AltaMira Press, 2002.