Journey
Harappan cities
The first cities in South Asia, on a plan nothing prepares you for: gridded streets, covered drains serving ordinary houses, standardised bricks and weights across a million square kilometres — and no palace, no temple and no royal tomb that anybody has yet been able to identify as one of those things.
Stops (16)
- Mehrgarh · from c. 7000 BCE
Farming, herding, cotton and drilled human teeth from the seventh millennium BCE, in a village at the mouth of the Bolan pass occupied for four thousand years. Mehrgarh is the deep root of everything Harappan: the wheat, barley, cattle and cotton are all here before any city is. The village was occupied for four thousand years before the first city existed.
- Bhirrana · claimed from the 8th millennium BCE
Bhirrana in Haryana, whose lowest levels have produced radiocarbon dates among the earliest claimed for the tradition anywhere. The dates are argued over accordingly, because if they hold, the pre-urban sequence in the Ghaggar plains is as old as Mehrgarh's. The dates are argued over accordingly, because if they hold, the pre-urban sequence in the Ghaggar plains is as old as anything at Mehrgarh, and the civilisation has no single point of origin.
- Kot Diji · c. 3300–2600 BCE
Kot Diji gives its name to the pre-urban horizon out of which the mature cities emerged — a walled settlement with standardised pottery and a burnt destruction layer between its phase and the Harappan one. Whether that layer means conflict or accident is unresolved. A burnt destruction layer separates its phase from the Harappan one, and whether that means conflict or accident is unresolved.
- Mohenjo-daro · c. 2600–1900 BCE
The largest excavated Harappan city: gridded streets, a covered drainage system serving ordinary houses, the Great Bath, a granary and no identified palace or temple. Urban infrastructure a thousand years before the Buddha, and it is eroding from salt drawn up by irrigation around it. It is now eroding from salt drawn up by the irrigation around it, faster than it can be conserved.
- Harappa · excavated first
Harappa was dug first and so the civilisation carries its name, having already been quarried for its bricks to ballast the Lahore-Multan railway. Cemetery H here records a later phase in which the mature Harappan order had already dissolved, with different pottery and different burials. It had already been quarried for its bricks to ballast the Lahore to Multan railway before anyone dug it.
- Dholavira · c. 2650–1450 BCE
A stone-built city on an island in the Rann with a three-part division, sixteen reservoirs and a check-dam system — the most sophisticated Harappan water engineering known. The ten-sign signboard from its north gate is the largest Indus inscription found, and nobody can read it. The ten-sign signboard from its north gate is the largest Indus inscription found, and nobody can read it.
- Rakhigarhi · possibly the largest
Rakhigarhi may be the largest Harappan settlement by area, spread over several mounds with a modern village on top of them. Ancient DNA from a burial here has become central to arguments about Harappan ancestry, and about how much those arguments can carry on one genome. A modern village sits on top of the mounds, which limits how much can be excavated.
- Kalibangan · c. 3500–1750 BCE
A ploughed field from the pre-Harappan level at Kalibangan is the earliest known anywhere, and a row of pits with clay stelae has been interpreted as fire altars. The interpretation is disputed. The city sits on the dry Ghaggar bed, which is itself part of an argument. The city sits on the dry Ghaggar bed, which is itself part of a much larger argument.
- Banawali · c. 2500–1700 BCE
Banawali, on the dry Ghaggar, with a pre-Harappan phase under a mature-phase town whose streets are not on the standard grid. It is part of the argument about whether the eastern Harappan heartland was watered by a river that has since vanished, and about how uniform the cities really were.
- Chanhudaro · c. 2500–1900 BCE
A manufacturing town with bead-making, seal-cutting, bone-working and weight-making workshops and no citadel of its own. Chanhudaro shows the network's division of labour: some settlements were for administration and some were for production, and the products are identical across the whole area. Some settlements were for administration and some for production, and the products are identical across the whole area, which is the strongest single argument for a shared system rather than a shared style.
- Farmana · c. 2500 BCE
Farmana in Haryana, a settlement with an adjacent cemetery of some seventy burials, which makes it one of the main sites for Harappan mortuary practice and for regional variation in it. Its burials differ in orientation and grave goods from Harappa's, which tells against a single uniform culture. That tells against reading this as a single uniform culture with one burial rite.
- Sanauli · c. 2000–1800 BCE
Sanauli's coffin burials with solid-disc-wheeled carts, copper antennae swords, shields and a helmet, in the upper Doab just after the mature Harappan phase. Whether the carts are chariots and whether the people were Harappan, late Harappan or something else are all open, and heavily argued over. The question is argued about far beyond archaeology, which is part of why it stays open.
- Lothal · c. 2400 BCE
A trapezoidal brick basin usually read as a tidal dock, with a bead factory, a warehouse and Persian Gulf seals beside it. If the basin is a dock it is the clearest Harappan evidence of seaborne trade; the reading has been contested since it was published, and the shoreline has moved kilometres since.
- Rupnagar (Ropar) · c. 2500–1000 BCE
Rupnagar was the first Harappan site excavated after 1947 and one where Harappan levels sit directly under Painted Grey Ware, so the second urbanisation's pottery lies on top of the first urbanisation's city. Very few sites in India carry that sequence in one section. Very few sites in India carry the bridge between the two urbanisations in one section.
- Ganweriwala · essentially undug
Ganweriwala in Cholistan is one of the five largest Harappan sites and has never been properly excavated. What it holds is unknown. It is included here because the size of what has not been dug is part of the honest description of this civilisation. The size of what has not been dug is part of the honest description of this civilisation.
- Sutkagan Dor · the western edge
Sutkagan Dor near the Makran coast is the westernmost Harappan site, a walled settlement on a route toward Iran and the Gulf. It marks the limit of a network that reached Mesopotamia, and it is a small fortified place rather than a city, which is what the edge of this system looks like.