Place · Harappan town · Pakistan
Chanhudaro
The Harappan manufacturing town in Nawabshah district, Sindh, Pakistan, 130 kilometres south of Mohenjo-daro, excavated by E.J.H. Mackay in 1930s. Chanhudaro flourished c.2500-1800 BCE as a specialised craft centre: workshops produced steatite seals, carnelian beads, shell bangles, bronze tools and bone artifacts, with no citadel of its own — the town's economic function dictated its layout rather than any administrative or defensive role. The famous 'bead factory' and the kiln remains are reconstructed in the National Museum, Karachi. The site is one of the few Harappan locations where craft specialisation is directly documented in the archaeology.
- Function
- Archaeology & heritage
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 26.160, 68.320
Connections (1)
- AnalogueFarmana
Chanhudaro has workshops and no citadel; Farmana has a cemetery of seventy burials whose orientation and grave goods differ from Harappa's. Between them they undercut the textbook picture of a uniform civilisation of twin-mound cities: the network had specialised production towns and real regional variation in how it buried its dead.
On these journeys
Sources
Chanhudaro excavation reports
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