Journey

Pre-Harappan, Chalcolithic & early historic horizons

Stops (21)

1. Lahuradewa · claimed from the 7th millennium BCE

   A lakeside settlement in the middle Ganges plain whose lowest levels have produced rice grains and pottery with claimed dates in the seventh millennium BCE. Whether the earliest rice is cultivated or gathered is the crux, and the answer decides whether the Ganges plain is an independent centre of rice domestication.

2. Ahar · c. 3000–1500 BCE

   Ahar near Udaipur gives its name to the Ahar-Banas Chalcolithic, a copper-working culture of southern Rajasthan contemporary with the Harappan cities and not part of them. Its black-and-red ware and its copper are found across the Banas basin, and it had its own trajectory entirely. Its black-and-red ware and its copper are found across the Banas basin, and it had its own trajectory entirely, contemporary with the Harappan cities and not part of them.

3. Balathal · c. 3700–1500 BCE

   Balathal, whose excavated houses, fortification wall, cattle pens and subsistence evidence make it the best-documented Ahar-Banas settlement. A skeleton from the site shows the earliest known case of leprosy in the world, which is the kind of thing only close excavation produces. A skeleton from the site carries the earliest known case of leprosy in the world, which is the kind of result that only close excavation and modern osteology together can produce.

4. Gilund · c. 3000–1700 BCE

   Gilund, one of the largest Ahar-Banas settlements, where a hoard of clay seal impressions was found in a room — a find with no Harappan parallel and no clear explanation, in a culture that otherwise left no writing. It is important for craft production and exchange in prehistoric Rajasthan. A culture that otherwise left no writing at all produced a room full of seal impressions.

5. Ganeshwar-Jodhpura · c. 2800–1500 BCE

   The Ganeshwar-Jodhpura copper-working landscape in the Khetri belt of Rajasthan, which almost certainly supplied a good deal of the copper the Harappan cities used. Thousands of copper objects have been recovered, and the relationship between this ore field and the cities that bought from it is largely inferred. The relationship between this ore field and the cities that bought from it is largely inferred.

6. Inamgaon · c. 1600–700 BCE

   Inamgaon on the Ghod in Maharashtra, the type site for the late Jorwe Chalcolithic, with over a hundred excavated houses, a channel for irrigation and enough burial and dietary evidence to reconstruct village life in detail. It was abandoned as the climate dried, which is documented here more clearly than anywhere.

7. Daimabad · c. 2200–1000 BCE

   Daimabad on the Pravara, the southernmost Harappan-related site and the findspot of the bronze chariot, buffalo, rhinoceros and elephant. The Jorwe culture here is not Harappan, but the bronzes and some pottery show contact eight hundred kilometres beyond the network's edge. The bronze chariot from the site is among the largest prehistoric metal objects found in India, and the Jorwe culture around it is not Harappan, which makes the contact harder to explain rather than easier.

8. Burzahom · c. 3000–1500 BCE

   Burzahom in Kashmir, a Neolithic settlement of pit dwellings with dog burials beside human ones, bone tools of Central Asian type, and an engraved slab showing a hunting scene with two suns. The valley's prehistory points north over the passes rather than south to the plains. The valley's prehistory points north over the passes rather than south to the plains.

9. Kunal · pre-Harappan

   Kunal in Haryana, a pre-urban settlement with pit dwellings, silver and gold ornaments and early Harappan pottery, which helps anchor the chronology before the mature cities and argues that the eastern plains developed their own sequence rather than receiving a finished civilisation. The silver and gold ornaments from its levels are unusually early, and its pit dwellings put it in the same technological world as Burzahom rather than as Mohenjo-daro.

10. Atranjikhera · c. 1200–200 BCE

    Atranjikhera in the upper Ganges plain has the fullest sequence anywhere of Ochre Coloured Pottery, Black and Red Ware, Painted Grey Ware and Northern Black Polished Ware, with the earliest iron in the region in its middle levels. It is the type sequence for the second urbanisation's prehistory. It is the type sequence for the second urbanisation's prehistory in the upper Doab.

11. Ahichhatra · c. 1000 BCE onward

    Ahichhatra, the Panchala capital, one of the largest early historic cities of the north with a five-kilometre rampart, Painted Grey Ware in its lower levels and Kushan-period terracottas above. It connects prehistoric pottery sequences to a named kingdom in the epic and Puranic geography. It connects a prehistoric pottery sequence to a kingdom named in the epic and Puranic geography.

12. Kauśāmbī · c. 600 BCE – 6th century CE

    Kausambi, the Vatsa capital on the Yamuna, with a six-kilometre rampart circuit, an Ashokan pillar and the Ghositarama monastery. It was one of the great cities of the second urbanisation and stops functioning as one in the sixth century, and the reasons are still argued. The abandonment of the great doab cities in these decades is one of the period's unsolved questions.

13. Sanghol · c. 200 BCE – 300 CE

    Sanghol in Punjab, an early historic settlement that produced a buried hoard of one hundred and seventeen carved Mathura sandstone railing pillars from a stupa, apparently hidden. It places the north-western plains between the Indus and Gangetic worlds, and the sculpture is Mathura's, carried north. The sculpture is Mathura's, carved four hundred kilometres away and carried north.

14. Agroha · c. 300 BCE onward

    Agroha in Haryana, an ancient mercantile town on the route between the north-west and the upper Ganges, which produced a large hoard of punch-marked and Indo-Greek coins. It fills in the commercial geography of a region usually described only through its capitals. It fills in the commercial geography of a region usually described only through its capitals, and the coins in its hoard run from punch-marked silver to Indo-Greek issues.

15. 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 who these people were are both open questions, argued about far beyond archaeology. The carts have solid disc wheels rather than spoked ones, which is the crux of the chariot argument, and no comparable burial has been found anywhere else in India.

16. Attirampakkam · from c. 1.5 million years ago

    Attirampakkam on the Kortallayar, with Acheulian handaxes dated to about 1.5 million years ago and a Middle Palaeolithic industry from about 385,000 years ago. It is the deepest point in this repository's chronology, and it was first recognised by Robert Bruce Foote in 1863. Robert Bruce Foote identified it in 1863, in the same decade he recognised that India had a Palaeolithic at all.

17. Amri · c. 3600–2600 BCE

    A low mound on the right bank of the Indus in Dadu district that fixes the chronology of Sindh before the Harappans. Casal dug four periods here between 1959 and 1962 and found Amri's own painted buff ware — geometric bands with ibex and humped cattle — directly overlain by Mature Harappan material. Mohenjo-daro thirty kilometres downriver cannot be excavated to its beginnings because the water table stops the trench, so this small site supplies the floor the great one withholds.

18. Sohr Damb, Nal · c. 3800–2000 BCE

    The mound at Nal in the Khuzdar hills, which gives the Amri–Nal culture the other half of its name and the finest painted pottery of fourth-millennium Balochistan. Nal ware is polychrome: a buff ground, black outline, and the enclosed fields filled in with red, blue and yellow — a technical ambition nothing else in the subcontinent attempted for another two thousand years. Hughes-Buller dug it in 1903 and a German mission re-excavated between 2001 and 2004 to establish the sequence.

19. Pirak · c. 1800–800 BCE

    The site that shows what followed the cities, on the Kachi plain near Sibi and excavated by the same French mission that dug Mehrgarh twenty kilometres away. Its levels begin as Mohenjo-daro's urban order is ending, and they do not read as collapse: rice and sorghum appear alongside the older wheat and barley, and the domestic horse and the two-humped camel show up together for the first time in the subcontinent's record. Villages rather than cities, but a new agriculture and new animals.

20. Nausharo · c. 3000–2000 BCE

    Six kilometres from Mehrgarh, and the join between the Balochistan neolithic and Indus urbanism. The lower levels continue the local Mehrgarh tradition; the upper ones are a Mature Harappan town, with brick sizes, weights and pottery changing over in stratified order. Because Mohenjo-daro's earliest levels lie under the water table and cannot be dug, this is where the arrival of Harappan urbanism can actually be watched happening rather than inferred.

21. The Gandhara grave culture · c. 1700–800 BCE

    The stone-lined graves of Swat, Dir and Chitral, with their burnished grey ware, copper pins, terracotta figurines and horse gear, dug at Katelai, Loebanr, Timargarha and beneath the Buddhist sacred area at Butkara. They are the only substantial body of evidence for the north-west between the Harappan collapse and the historic period. They were long read as the signature of Indo-Aryan speakers arriving through these valleys, an identification now treated cautiously — a burial rite and a language need not travel together.

Sources

• Wikipedia