Introduction
The Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC) encompassed much of Pakistan, western India, and northeastern Afghanistan; extending from Pakistani Balochistan in the west to Uttar Pradesh in the east, northeastern Afghanistan to the north and Maharashtra to the south.[21] Shortugai to the north is on the Oxus River, the Afghan border with Tajikistan, and in the west Sutkagan Dor is close to the Iranian border. The Kulli culture of Balochistan, of which more than 100 settlement sites are known, can be regarded as a local variant of the IVC, or a related culture.
The geography of the Indus Valley put the civilisations that arose there in a highly similar situation to those in Egypt and Peru, with rich agricultural lands being surrounded by highlands, desert, and ocean. Recently, Indus sites have been discovered in Pakistan's northwestern Frontier Province as well. Other IVC colonies can be found in Afghanistan while smaller isolated colonies can be found as far away as Turkmenistan and in Maharashtra. The largest number of colonies are in the Punjab, Sindh, Rajasthan, Haryana, and Gujrat belt Coastal settlements extended from Sutkagan Dor[22] in Western Baluchistan to Lothal[23] in Gujarat. An Indus Valley site has been found on the OxusRiver at Shortughai in northern Afghanistan,[24] in the Gomal River valley in northwestern Pakistan,[25] at Manda, Jammu on the Beas Rivernear Jammu,[26] India, and at Alamgirpur on the Hindon River, only 28 km from Delhi.[27] Indus Valley sites have been found most often on rivers, but also on the ancient seacoast,[28] for example, Balakot,[29] and on islands, for example, Dholavira.[30]
It flourished in the basins of the Indus River, which flows through the length of Pakistan, and along a system of perennial, mostly monsoon-fed, rivers that once coursed in the vicinity of the seasonal Ghaggar-Hakra river in northwest India and eastern Pakistan.[3][4][5][note 2] There is evidence of dry river beds overlapping with the Hakra channel in Pakistan and the seasonal Ghaggar River in India. Many Indus Valley sites have been discovered along the Ghaggar-Hakra beds.[31] Among them are: Rupar, Rakhigarhi, Sothi, Kalibangan, and Ganwariwala.[32]
According to some archaeologists, more than 500 Harappan sites have been discovered along the dried up river beds of the Ghaggar-Hakra River and its tributaries,[33] in contrast to only about 100 along the Indus and its tributaries;[34] consequently, in their opinion, the appellation Indus Ghaggar-Hakra civilisation is justified. However, these arguments are disputed by other archaeologists who state that the Ghaggar-Hakra desert area has been left untouched by settlements and agriculture since the end of the Indus period and hence shows more sites than those found in the alluvium of the Indus Valley; second, that the number of Harappan sites along the Ghaggar-Hakra river beds has been exaggerated.[35] "Harappan Civilisation" may be gaining favour as a name, following the archaeological norm of naming a civilisation after its first findspot.[citation needed]
Discovery and history of excavation[edit]
The ruins of Harappa were described in 1842 by Charles Masson in his Narrative of Various Journeys in Balochistan, Afghanistan, and the Punjab, where locals talked of an ancient city extending "thirteen cosses" (about 25 miles or 41 km).[note 4]
In 1856, Alexander Cunningham, later director-general of the archaeological survey of northern India, visited Harappa where the British engineers John and William Brunton were laying the East Indian Railway Company line connecting the cities of Karachi and Lahore. John wrote, "I was much exercised in my mind how we were to get ballast for the line of the railway". They were told of an ancient ruined city near the lines, called Harappa. Visiting the city, he found it full of hard well-burnt bricks, and, "convinced that there was a grand quarry for the ballast I wanted", the city of Harappa was reduced to ballast.[37] A few months later, further north, John's brother William Brunton's "section of the line ran near another ruined city, bricks from which had already been used by villagers in the nearby village of Harappa at the same site. These bricks now provided ballast along 93 miles (150 km) of the railroad track running from Karachi to Lahore".[37]
In 1872–75, Cunningham published the first Harappan seal (with an erroneous identification as Brahmi letters).[38] More Harappan seals were discovered in 1912 by John Faithfull Fleet, prompting an archaeological campaign under Sir John Hubert Marshall. Marshall, Rai Bahadur Daya Ram Sahni and Madho Sarup Vats began excavating Harappa in 1921, finding buildings and artefacts indicative of an ancient civilisation. These were soon complemented by discoveries at Mohenjo-daro by Rakhal Das Banerjee, Ernest J. H. Mackay, and Marshall. By 1931, much of Mohenjo-daro had been excavated, but excavations continued, such as that led by Sir Mortimer Wheeler, director of the Archaeological Survey of India in 1944. Among other archaeologists who worked on IVC sites before the independence in 1947 were Ahmad Hasan Dani, Brij Basi Lal, Nani Gopal Majumdar, and Sir Marc Aurel Stein.[39]
Following independence, the bulk of the archaeological finds were inherited by Pakistan where most of the IVC was based, and excavations from this time include those led by Wheeler in 1949, archaeological adviser to the Government of Pakistan. Outposts of the Indus Valley civilisation were excavated as far west as Sutkagan Dor in Pakistani Balochistan, as far north as at Shortugai on the Amu Darya (the river's ancient name was Oxus) in current Afghanistan, as far east as at Alamgirpur, Uttar Pradesh, India and as far south as at Malwan, in modern-day Surat, Gujarat, India.[40]
In 2010, heavy floods hit Haryana in India and damaged the archaeological site of Jognakhera, where ancient copper smelting furnaces were found dating back almost 5,000 years. The Indus Valley Civilisation site was hit by almost 10 feet of water as the Sutlej Yamuna link canal
Chronology[edit]
The cities of the Indus Valley Civilisation had "social hierarchies, their writing system, their large planned cities and their long-distance trade [which] mark them to archaeologists as a full-fledged 'civilisation.'"[42] The mature phase of the Harappan civilisation lasted from c. 2600 to 1900 BCE. With the inclusion of the predecessor and successor cultures — Early Harappan and Late Harappan, respectively — the entire Indus Valley Civilisation may be taken to have lasted from the 33rd to the 14th centuries BCE. It is part of the Indus Valley Tradition, which also includes the pre-Harappan occupation of Mehrgarh, the earliest farming site of the Indus Valley.[16][43]
Several periodisations are employed for the periodisation of the IVC.[16][43] The most commonly used classifies the Indus Valley Civilisation into Early, Mature and Late Harappan Phase.[44] An alternative approach by Shaffer divides the broader Indus Valley Tradition into four eras, the pre-Harappan "Early Food Producing Era," and the Regionalisation, Integration, and Localisation eras, which correspond roughly with the Early Harappan, Mature Harappan, and Late Harappan phases.[15][45]
According to Rao, Hakra Ware has been found at Bhirrana, and is pre-Harappan, dating to the 8th-7th millennium BCE.[46][47][48] Hakra Ware culture is a material culture which is contemporaneous with the early Harappan Ravi phase culture (3300-2800 BCE) of the Indus Valley.[49][50] According to Dikshit and Rami, the estimation for the antiquity of Bhirranaas pre-Harappan is based on two calculations of charcoal samples, giving two dates of respectively 7570-7180 BCE, and 6689-6201 BCE.[46][47]
| Dates | Main Phase | Mehrgarh phases | Harappan phases | Other phases | Era |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7000–5500 BCE | Pre-Harappan | Mehrgarh I (aceramic Neolithic) | Early Food Producing Era | ||
| 5500–3300 BCE | Pre-Harappan/Early Harappan[51] | Mehrgarh II-VI (ceramic Neolithic) | Regionalisation Era c.4000-2500/2300 BCE (Shaffer)[52] c.5000-3200 BCE (Coningham & Young)[53] | ||
| 3300–2800 BCE | Early Harappan[51] c.3300-2800 BCE (Mughal)[54][51][55] c.5000-2800 BCE (Kenoyer)[51] | Harappan 1 (Ravi Phase; Hakra Ware) | |||
| 2800–2600 BCE | Mehrgarh VII | Harappan 2 (Kot Diji Phase, Nausharo I) | |||
| 2600–2450 BCE | Mature Harappan (Indus Valley Civilisation) | Harappan 3A (Nausharo II) | Integration Era | ||
| 2450–2200 BCE | Harappan 3B | ||||
| 2200–1900 BCE | Harappan 3C | ||||
| 1900–1700 BCE | Late Harappan | Harappan 4 | Cemetery H[56] Ochre Coloured Pottery[56] | Localisation Era | |
| 1700–1300 BCE | Harappan 5 | ||||
| 1300–600 BCE | Post-Harappan Iron Age India | Painted Grey Ware (1200-600 BCE) Vedic period (c.1500-500 BCE) | Regionalisation c.1200-300 BCE (Kenoyer)[51] c.1500[57]-600 BCE (Coningham & Young)[58] | ||
| 600-300 BCE | Northern Black Polished Ware (Iron Age)(700-200 BCE) Second urbanisation (c.500-200 BCE) | Integration[58] |
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