Place · Chalcolithic Harappan settlement · India
Daimabad
The Chalcolithic-Harappan site in Ahmednagar district, Maharashtra — the southernmost known Harappan-related settlement, excavated by B.P. Bopardikar from 1958. Daimabad is the findspot of a sensational hoard of four bronze figures — a chariot driven by two zebu bulls, a buffalo, a rhinoceros, and an elephant — now in the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (formerly Prince of Wales Museum) in Mumbai. The chariot's wheels are solid-disc, Harappan in style. The site's cultural layers run c.2300-700 BCE through Savalda, Malwa, Jorwe and Late Jorwe phases. Daimabad's chalcolithic Jorwe village plan is one of the clearest Deccan Chalcolithic documents.
- Function
- Archaeology & heritage
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 19.520, 74.700
Connections (2)
- Southern extensionMohenjo-daro
Daimabad on the Pravara in Maharashtra is the southernmost Harappan-related site, some eight hundred kilometres beyond the main zone, and it produced the famous bronzes — a chariot with a driver, a buffalo, a rhinoceros and an elephant — that now sit in Mumbai. Whether they are Harappan or later Jorwe work is still argued, which makes the single most striking bronze group from Indian prehistory also the least securely dated.
- Route adjacencySurkotada
Surkotada in Kachchh and Daimabad on the Pravara are the southern reach of this system, and both are contested in the same way: Surkotada for horse bones, Daimabad for bronzes and pottery that look Harappan in a Jorwe village. In both cases a single class of find is being asked to carry a large argument, which is characteristic of the frontier evidence.
On these journeys
Sources
Daimabad excavation report
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