Place · Harappan-period settlement · Pakistan
Nausharo
Six kilometres from Mehrgarh, and the site that joins it to the Indus cities. Jean-François Jarrige excavated here between 1985 and 1996 and found a sequence running from a late pre-Indus occupation continuous with the Mehrgarh tradition straight into a Mature Harappan town, with the pottery, weights and brickwork changing over in stratified order. The Kachi plain therefore shows the transition to Harappan urbanism happening on the ground rather than arriving finished.
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 29.365, 67.588
Worth knowing
Nausharo's terracotta female figurines wear elaborate coiffures with traces of pigment still on them, which is the closest thing there is to evidence of how Harappan-period hair was actually dressed.
Connections (2)
- Succession in timeMehrgarh
Six kilometres apart and dug by the same man, these two sites carry the longest continuous record in the region. Mehrgarh runs from roughly 7000 BCE through farming, herding, the first pottery and the first cotton. Nausharo picks up in the late fourth millennium and runs straight into a Mature Harappan town, with the brick sizes, weights and ceramics changing over in stratified order. Jean-François Jarrige excavated both, which is why the join between the Balochistan neolithic and Indus urbanism can be read at all.
- PrecursorMohenjo-daro
Nausharo shows Harappan urbanism arriving rather than appearing. Its lower levels are continuous with the local Mehrgarh tradition of the Kachi plain; its upper levels are a Harappan town with standardised bricks, weights and the familiar pottery. Mohenjo-daro can never show this, because its earliest levels lie under the water table and cannot be dug. So the question of where the cities came from is answered, where it is answered at all, on a small mound in Balochistan rather than in the cities themselves.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Nausharo”. J.-F. Jarrige, Nausharo excavation reports, Mission Archéologique de l'Indus; Catherine Jarrige et al., Mehrgarh Field Reports.
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