The Ancients - Harappan Civilisation

Episode Date: September 17, 2023

The Harappan civilisation, also known as the Indus Valley civilisation, was an ancient urban civilisation that thrived in the Indus River valley in South Asia around 4000 years ago. Known for its well-planned cities, advanced drainage systems, and incredible culture - it played an integral role in ancient History. But with a script that still remains undeciphered to this day - what do we actually know about the Harappan civilisation?In this episode, Tristan welcomes archaeologist Disha Ahluwalia to the podcast to talk about her work and research surrounding the Harappan. Looking at the archaeological evidence, their appearances in other cultures, and the legacy left behind at Rakhigarhi- who were the Harappan, and how did they influence the course of history?Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Dan Snow, Suzannah Lipscomb, Lucy Worsley, Matt Lewis, Tristan Hughes and more. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code ANCIENTS. Download the app on your smart TV or in the app store or sign up here.You can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the Entrance on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and in today's episode, well, I'm doing this intro very early in the morning. The sun is only just beginning to rise from northern Saudi Arabia from Alula. Alula was this great crossroads of ancient history of trade routes for instance the incense trade route you have ancient civilizations such as the Dardan culture almost 3,000 years old they have some remarkable figurines surviving and these small rock-cut

tombs too following them you have the more well-known Nabataeans think Petra but also think northern Arabia and here the site of Hegra once again another of these great Nabataean centers renowned for monumental rock-cut tombs in the landscape. Don't you worry, whilst I'm here, I'm getting photos, we're doing videos, you can have a look at this archaeology first-hand through my reels on Instagram, or you can just look them up online. The archaeology of this area of northern Saudi Arabia, of Alula, is sometimes overshadowed. However, it is extraordinary. The landscape is unlike anything I've ever seen. So don't you worry.

We're going to be exploring Arabian archaeology and ancient history more in the coming weeks and months on the ancients. I guarantee you that. I've been blown away so far. Now, in the meantime this episode today well it's something completely different. We are going to the Indian subcontinent to talk about something equally fascinating. One of the most extraordinary bronze age civilizations in the world. It's called the Harappan civilization. You and me might know it better as the Indus Valley civilization.. However, there are some

issues with calling it the latter, and Harappan is probably more appropriate, as you're going to hear in today's episode. Now, to give a great overview of the Harappan Civilization, with a particular focus on one key site, the site of Rakigari. Well, I was delighted to interview, dialing in from New Delhi, the Indian archaeologist Dr. Disha Aluwalia. Disha, she has recently been on excavation at Rakigari. We've known each other for a couple of years now, and it was wonderful to get her on the podcast. I really do hope you enjoy, and here's Disha. I really do hope you enjoy and here's Disha. And to talk about something as amazing as this, the Harappan civilization, this is such an important part of the Bronze Age story of the world that is, I think, is it fair to say, sometimes overlooked compared to the likes of Egypt and, say, Mesopotamia? It is. I mean, even in our country, it's overlooked. you know often ask me as to why we don't have pyramids and why we don't have big structures

why are we talking about pottery and why are we talking about drainage and its structures and town planning and all of that it's for people it's just common it's normal but in its own sense you know indigenously or organically this culture has grown and the culture as it was evolving through time it took the shape of a civilization. So it all happened organically in the subcontinent. And it happened due to various factors like environmental regions. They affected a lot. Different ecologies or harappans.

There was some uniformity, but then there was diversity as well. So if you look at the span and the spread of the civilization, all of these factors really play an important role. And that is what India is today as well. If you ever visit India, about every two to three kilometers, you will find a drastic change, be it in the dialect, be it in the food habits, everything. You know, these small, small, minor cultural traits, they vary. And that's what Harappan civilization is all about. Well, I'd definitely love to explore the detail of that variation as you highlighted there, and also the great extent of this civilization. But first off, when are we

talking? How far back in time are we going when we're talking about the Harappan civilization? There are different phases. So the early farming phase, it defines the beginning of farming and agriculture in the subcontinent. trades that we identify and sort of become this mature Harappan classical characteristics. It starts with the early farming phase, which is about 5000 to 6000 BCE. And then you have this regionalization era where you have small like sites like KOTG, AMRI, NAL these sites coming up they have their own different cultural trades yet they had their common sort of identity markers as to say and then around third millennium BCE about 2600 BCE we have the mature Harappan phase which is the urban phase so that's when you start seeing cities coming up, you know, small villages becoming major cities, and that is because of the trade. And then about 1900 to 2000 BCE, the de-urbanization slowly starts taking place. So it's a slow process.

And we do see that in archaeological data as well. So by 2019-100, you see this de-urbanization, the sites, the settlements are becoming smaller, as opposed to the early phases or the mature Harappan phase. And then you have the late Harappan, which ends by 1500. So if you see from 5500 all the way to 1500 BCE, this entire stretch is Harappan culture. And all of it comes under the term Harappan civilization. That is such a massive time span to try and get your head around as well. And as you say, you can see that evolution and those different kind of phases of this civilization. I must also

ask about the location of this civilization in the Indian subcontinent today. Because I think it's fair to say, particularly in the the west we sometimes refer to it by the name more commonly like the Indus Valley civilization but but why is Harappa more accurate or is this a better name to say when focusing on this bronze age civilization? Yeah it's a really nice question I think and I often get into these conversations with a lot of senior archaeologists because what happens is if you read any paper, any research paper, academic paper, you will read the title, we read Ender's site excavated, blah, blah, blah. And in the abstract, they will mention Ahrapan site.

So there's this confusion and a lot of young archaeologists started to pick up on these two different terms being used for just one civilization. So a lot of questions have been arised in recent past about this term, like whether should we call it Indus Valley civilization or Rappan civilization. Or now there is a very different group altogether who wants it to be Indus Saraswati civilization. I don't want to go into that because it's a very different side of the spectrum altogether, an extreme side. So if we have Indus civilization on one end, the other end is Indus Saraswati civilization. At this middle, you have Harappan civilization. And the reason why, so what happens is when Harappa was

excavated in 1920s followed by the excavation of Mohunjodaro, the sites more or less that were explored and excavated were in the Indus Valley, right. So, a lot of exploration were being taken place in that region and slowly and steadily about 30s and 40s, these archaeologists started plotting more sites on the map. But then in 1947, you have partition of India and Pakistan. All of the sites which were investigated right from 1920s to 1940s were now in newly formed Pakistan. So then the Indian side, the Archaeological Survey of India, the newly sort of formed Archaeological Survey of India,

they started reinvestigating this particular issue. They started finding more sites which belong to that cultural period in the Indian domain, which is the eastern domain of the civilization. And they started finding a lot of sites in the states of Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, in fact in Gujarat. Gujarat has a large, large number of sites. And after analyzing all of this, once, you know, there was a lot of expedition data that

was obtained at the end of many, many projects that were funded by the government, they realized that sites were not limited to just Indus Valley. They are on banks of different rivers. So in Gujarat, you know, it's not only in Kutch, but different parts of Gujarat. You have different areas which were occupied by the Harappans. And even in Rajasthan, in Punjab, Haryana, all those Indus is a very big river system. There are a lot of tributaries. It sort of seemed that geographically it's giving a

very limiting term so archaeologists decided that let's call and it was not only Indian archaeologists but many archaeologists even western scholars they all sort of decided that let's call it Harappan civilization because Harappa were the first site that was excavated. And as per archaeological contention, usually either we, if we don't know what exactly that particular civilization was called, we would rather either call it, you know, name it after a pottery or any marker ceramic or the site that, you know, where the culture was first discovered. So therefore, the name Harappan civilization came into being. So, therefore, the name Harappan civilization came into being. Then, you know, Paushal also gave the term we have politically and otherwise with Pakistan, I think Harappan civilization seems to be a very much more accepted sort of or it's not going to give rise to any political controversy, you know, because the moment you say it's Indian

civilization, people would now start to say it's no longer in India. Why does it concern us? But whereas large number of sites, actually more sites are on the eastern domain than they are on the western domain. So there is no acceptance to either any of these terms. I think we need to do that. Scholars who are working in Harappan civilization, they need to sort of come together and decide as to what term they should be using now, Harappan civilization or Indus. And I think it's all about convenience, because the moment you say Indus Valley civilization, people know what you're talking about. Harappan civilization is still, you need to explain them what Harappan civilization is all about. So, yeah. Well, it's interesting, and it's important to highlight, and you know, we'll keep using the

word Harappan, therefore, and as you say, it is because it is more than just the indus river valley as you've highlighted there i must ask though you did touch on it at the start with the emergence of the harappan civilization and an indigenous culture but do we know whereabouts the earliest evidence for the harappan civilization is and do we have any idea where almost like the core of it is and it spreads out from over the following centuries? Or how far geographically does the Harappan civilization ultimately spread? So we know the extent of the civilization.

We know from Makran coast to the banks of Yamuna in Uttar Pradesh and from Jammu to Maharashtra. So this entire spread which covers different countries, you have Afghanistan, Pakistan and then coming to India you have Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and then you have in the south you have Gujarat and then touching to Maharashtra and north you have Jammu. So this entire spread is what comes under the realm of Harappan civilization. So we know the spread. But as you asked, we don't know the core.

So therefore, the site of Mehrgarh is very important. Because so far, it's the earliest dated site for the Neolithic in the subcontinent. And the site of Pirak, Nausharo and Mehrgarh, all in the same region together, tell us the story of this evolution from Neolithic to Bronze Age. So we have a type site as of now, an example, a classical example of the evolution of culture from Neolithic to Bronze Age. But we also have site of Birana on the eastern domain which is also dated to about 6000 bce right so we as of now are unable to pinpoint as to where was the core and then the diffusion

has happened we don't know exactly we don't know whether it was from indus to the other eastern region or from the indian part or from the Ghaggar or from Haryana, Punjab or from there it has gone. We don't know that yet. I think a lot of scholars will argue that it is on the Indus and then again you have scholars who say that we don't we think it's on the Indian domain. So again these because of the divide of the two countries a lot of our shared history is also divided our shared resources are also divided so we are unable to come together and find a middle ground find where exactly was a core area i'd like to ask therefore teacher about urbanization and

urbanism is it fair to say that this is one of the key things that is often associated with the Harappan civilization, the emergence of these great urban centers? What do we know about them? Yeah, so urban centers are one of the characteristics of Harappan civilization. And that's the reason why it is a civilization, right? Because of the cities, rise of the cities. And there are five major cities. We have Harappa mohjadaro uh ganveri wala uh we have dholavira and then we have rakhi gadi these are five big cities but

other than that we also have lothul we have many many other cities uh were not as big banavali were not as big as these five major cities, but they have these urban characteristics, right? So basically, urbanization in Harappan civilization means you have town planning, you would follow either a grid system, where the settlement is divided into grids, and the streets will intersect at right angle, right? There will will be drainage proper sanitary you know system drainage system which is not existent before and sort of disappears afterwards as well then you have the stratification of the settlement you have the citadel lower town middle town all of these terms of course they are adopted uh from the egyptian and uh sorry Roman civilization and other sites which Wheeler and other archaeologists

were also investigating in 1930s and 40s but then yet so there is an elevated area which is then you have lesser elevated area of the settlement which is middle town and then you have lower town and then you have trade organization so we do see the trade and craft production actually. Craft production plays an important role in the rise of Harappan civilization because it's not just, it's not a simple thing. They are producing beads, but they are getting material from different parts. They have this whole system in place for making these beads. And these beads are going as far in different parts of the country in the contemporary civilization. And in fact, I'm sure you would have read River Kings.

The opening was the carnelian bead. The carnelian bead is coming from Kambad in Gujarat. And the antiquity of craft or lapidary in Kambad goes as far back to 4th millennium BCE, which is to Harappan period. So we know that Harappans were using the area of Kambad and the region around Kambad for exploiting agate and carnelian manufacturing beads and distributing it, not only to the Western civilization, but also probably to the contemporary cultures as well

in other parts of the subcontinent. And this is just one part you know and i recently wrote about cotton in one of my columns and cotton as well so they domesticated cotton and that cotton reached you know to different parts of the contemporary civilization as early as 5000 bce recently a study was undertaken at a site in Israel, where they found the cotton fiber, which of the subspecies, which is from Indian subcontinent that was domesticated by the Harappans. And the date was about 7200 years ago, which is about roughly 5000 BCE. So they're trading the exporting goods. We know that copper was also being imported from

Oman, not only exported, we are also importing copper from Oman and also vice versa. So copper is going both ways. We know that lapis is coming from Badaksha. The trade, this matrix that is created by the Harappans, of of course they didn't build pyramids but then they did this the a lot of wood now we have uh inscriptional evidence coming from the contemporary civilization of course the india script is not deciphered but the scripts of the western contemporary civilization that is that are deciphered now they tell us that wood is also coming from the Indian subcontinent. So we have cotton, wood, carnelian, perhaps other organic material as well, traces of which we have not found as yet, are not present in the archaeological data. So that trade has sort

of given rise to this urbanization. So as economics goes, the more money you have, you can build cities because now you need to organize your craft it's no longer just making it because you have no other work to do other than you know have time in between going to the fields and at home or women are doing a lot of work as well you know we know that textile production pottery production women are helping out a lot and they have the equal share in the production unit as well but if you look at it it's not just a hobby it's not just doing it for just selling it to the nearest settlement now it has come to the level where they have to now produce more so they can sell it to the contemporary civilization that go beyond indus you know so they take their ships

and then they go to oman and then they cross and then they go all the way to mesopotamia egypt so because of that they need this organization within the society and that happens even today you need some sort of authority also in place you need to have stratification you need to have so your society becomes complex and that is what we see in the integration phase of the mature harappan phase of the civilization it's so cool to hear about those extensive trade networks and how they're connected to the emergence of these great urban centers the harappan civilization and for you disha who i know you've done a lot of work at one of those key centers which you highlighted at rakigari

but it must be really interesting as an archaeologist working at that site as you're excavating these buildings you're learning more about that sophisticated town layout you're seeing the industrial area and the residential area and so on and then uncovering artifacts and then looking at these artifacts and figuring out from how far away they might have come from and then being able to deduce more about these extensive trade connections that the Harappan civilization had. Yeah it's really amazing so a few years ago about seven eight years ago I participated in an excavation of another Harappan site and that was my first excavation about eight years ago i think eight nine years ago it was a site near india pakistan border in rajasthan called binjar it

was a very small site and we know that this is not an urban settlement for sure and when we started excavating the site and i remember in my trench i came across across mud bricks. And Harappans are not just building structures out of stones. Stones is used in one part. So here is another thing. So Harappans know the resources that are available. So people, they know the resources available to them. In Gujarat, they know that stone is largely available. So they will not exhaust their resources in getting

baked bricks or sun-dried bricks. They will rather go for the stones that is readily available. So Dholavira, it's built of the stones that is available in the Visneri. And then in the region of Rajasthan, that is Kalibanga, Rakhi Gadi and all the major centres and the banks of Ghaghar, which is going all the way to Pakistan becomes Hakra. There you see that because of the climatic condition, the temperature sort of rises during summer. It becomes very, very hot, right? So they need mud structures to combat heat. So they are building their structures with sun-dried bricks.

So baked bricks are only used for drainage or for any special purposes or to build wells, right? So they know the purpose because why should they spend their resources on baking bricks where they know that that's not going to help them combat heat and they are going to plaster those big bricks with mud anyways. So rather just build good sun-dried bricks and build amazing structures. So at Rakhi Gadi, Kali Banga and other sites in that region, you will find a lot of big bricks. But whereas Mojadaro and Harappa, which are on the banks of Indus, and Indus is known for its floods, right? It's a notorious river. Indus and Indus is known for its floods right it's a notorious river so you need more strong building material which can help you combat seasonal floods so they are using baked bricks

so if you see the span and the spread of the civilization you see that they are very much in tune with their environment they know what to do and what measures to take to sort of make their lives more comfortable in the given region so coming back to your question like when i was excavating that site called binjar and banks of gagar near the india indo-pakistan border i come across a lot of structures you know flows made up of these well naviglavigated well-built sun-dried bricks so they were so hard to even break like at the moment you recognize mud bricks if you see more towers if you can start identifying bricks you are done you've won the half battle and i remember i found one tank i found multiple herds and in the adjoining trenches, in the trenches next to my trenches,

they again started finding a lot of huts, a lot of furnaces. And after three seasons of excavation, we came to the conclusion that this particular, this settlement, this small ruler settlement was only for copper manufacturing. So this was a craft person's colony, metallurgist's colony. So we found slags, we found copper finish artifacts, we found a raw material, we found a whole system, a large number of short weights. So we know that this particular settlement was only for that, you know, and they were manufactured because it's also closer to Sindh. You might be getting copper from different regions perhaps from Oman or from K3 which is in

Rajasthan and then they're manufacturing and then they're giving to other settlements so see even today this happens and I'm talking as you know I'm living in a city a New Delhi or any other major city you see that the produce is coming from the satellite settlements, the settlements that are spread around the major centre. So that very phenomenon goes as far as back as Harappan civilization. So that was my first introduction to the craft aspect of the Harappans. And then of course, at Rakhigadi, craft aspect of the harappans and then of course the rakigari i got to excavate the very mound which is known for lapidary so it was again an amazing experience actually well before we go on to lapidary and a bit more on rakigari and we'll focus in on that industry stuff in a minute

but that's really interesting what you highlighted there adisha so you have these great centers as you mentioned harappa and rakigari and so. And then the evidence is revealing you have these industrial craft settlements. Were there also lots of, I'm guessing if this civilisation is still centred on agriculture, was the lion's share, the largest portion of the population, were they more spread out in more rural settlements? Do we know much about those two? Yeah, we now know that Harappans were not all urban settlers or traders or craft oriented people there were a lot of pastoralists and agro pastoralists as well so we have settlements which were undertaking agriculture and also i want to point out that no matter what craft you're doing or even if it's an industrial center, agriculture plays an important role even today in Indian subcontinent.

So even if you have a business on the side, you will still have one aspect to do. You will still have land where you will have people cultivating that area. So agriculture and other, you know, aspects of the professions, they all go hand in hand in our country. And especially if I talk about states like punjab and haryana which are known as the wheat basket of the country

even today if one son has gone abroad or gone to the city working father or uncles or another brother will always be in the village or near the fields and they all be cultivating throughout the year. So that is something which is still integral part of Indian society. And that must have been the case with the Harappans as well. So Harappans, when they became urban, I'm sure they have not left agriculture at all. There has to be a part of the community which is still producing. Because remember, there's evidence of granary in many, many centers. So they are producing, they are cultivating, right? And then they are storing for the population.

And I'm sure the surplus is coming from these satellite cities as well. So we have enough evidence. And also, I just want to point out, going beyond Harappan also, you have Chalkalitik settlements as well, the contemporary, the non-Harappan settlements. So they are agriculturists and pastoralists as well. So I'm sure there is a lot of connection and there's a lot of exchange happening, which has been overlooked by archaeologists so far. so if these people who are living in these urban centers or whatever hierarchy there was they are bringing in agriculture bringing in food and storing it in these centers and then i'm guessing almost kind of as you said like as the center then to dish out to the

community in whatever way that was happening thousands of years ago do we know much therefore about perhaps political structural hierarchy how these urban centers related to those outlying satellite settlements which supplied them really sadly the script is not deciphered. So we know that there is hierarchy, there is stratification of society. But we can't pinpoint or tell you exactly with surety as to what sort of system was in place. It's my belief as well, and I think scholars like Jonathan Markenoyer and others will also have also agreed to this

that the so-called priest king we now know the figurine is not a king not a priest we the name was given by John Marshall back in 1920s when the Indian society was very different or perhaps were perceived in a very different way by the officials who were in charge back then right so we can't really always take examples from our present to try and understand the past we don't know exactly but i know for sure there has to be some authority in place otherwise the system will not work you have to manage a large area or you have to manage craft you have to manage a lot of things so there has to be a system in place there there is stratification in the society it could be based on your job description or what you do because that is what could be because that's all we can find out from

archaeological data as of now i mean that priest king figure i guess we got to mention him a bit because that is such an iconic piece of art that has become associated with harappa i guess hasn't it could it therefore potentially if it's not you know this priestly figure could it potentially be a god a deity do we know much about that religious aspect or is that also kind of a bit still shrouded in mystery the reason why uh it was termed as priest king was because the facial features of the sculpture you know the person is closed eyes his eyes are shut and he sort of seems to be in a meditation mode or something so that's why it was termed as a priest or somebody who is into these you know religious practices and the reason why it was said to be a king because of the head

gear the headpiece on the sculpture and also there is a cloth wrapped around on the left or the right shoulder i'm not sure but there's a cloth wrapped around with trifold marks and so and it's a very small sculpture and it's made up of state iron state art is expensive so it was thought that this person has to be of some authority or belong to an economically well-off society and back then Marshall termed it as priest king it could be a person who was of a noble class or maybe of high belong to a high layer of the hierarchy perhaps or stratification, we don't know exactly because the context of the sculpture is missing from the early reports because, you know, we don't know exactly what was the exact context of the sculpture and in context I mean what sort of

features were found next to this particular sculpture sculpture was it in a house complex or otherwise that is sort of missing in the report if you read back the report by Marshall and also by Watts when it was excavated so we don't know that and similar is the case with another very iconic sculpture which is the Bronze Age figurine of Dancing Girl termed as Dancing Girl so I believe that it's she's not dancing and it's not a dancing girl and dancing girl is not an appropriate term and similarly for the priest king but yes we don't have these answers yet yet well there we go well let's keep focusing therefore on other artifacts from the harappa and if we focus on the work that you and the team have

been doing at rakigari recently you mentioned a word associated with that industrial part of rakigari which is lapidary now what is lapidary so lapidary is a manufacturing objects from stone and these are semi-precious stone right so kambad in gujarat on the gulf of Cambay is known for lapidary activity that means they make beads out of the carnelian or agates stone jasper turquoise lapis so because the area around Kambad and parts of Gujarat are rich resource of they are rich in agate reserves and carnelian reserves. Therefore, it's easy to get these raw material from there to Khambhat and to manufacture in Khambhat. So, we know that Lapidary main centre was in Khambhat. But now, going from Gujarat to Haryana, it's a long stretch, right? So, if a population of people living in Rakhi Gadi, they want beads

or they want for their own consumption of their own use they want beads, they can't be going all the way to Kambad all the time because see this is thousands of years ago and the inland trade network and how they were

commuting from one place to the other we know the waterway, how they were channeluting from one place to the other we know the waterway how they were channelizing rivers and all of that but we don't know exactly what route they followed inland right so going from combat to rakhi gadi would have been very difficult so therefore a lot of sites even dholavira lothal rakhi gadi many sites will have these small units of manufacturing because they have a lot of population they have to cater to and there must be a lot of travelers who are coming by and you have satellite settlements also. So many of these major centers had their own production unit. Now I don't know for sure whether they were getting a semi-finished products and they were sort of polishing it and

you know giving it the final touches or they were getting raw material now so when we started excavating rakigari last season the excavation was uh headed by dr manjul hk manjul he's uh with asi he's joint director general of asi uh and the team we decided to excavate mount number one that is RJ1 so now there's seven mounts at Rakigiri, Rakigiri is very big many scholars now believe that Rakigiri maybe you know might be larger than Mohjadaro in size but we don't have peer-reviewed paper published so if until then we can only just speculate so there's nothing written in words as of now about this particular aspect but anyways rakhi gadi is one of the largest sites there are seven mounds right so in mound number one

it was in the previous excavation the first excavation in 1998, when this particular area, Mount No. 1 was excavated, they found a furnace and they found a lot of debitage, canelion, agate, chert, debitage and near the furnace they found a pot which had over 200-300 beads in that particular pot. There were some finished beads, some semi-finished beads. So, looking at all of these evidence and they have found a lot of bone tools, a lot of, you know, stones which were used as polishers. So, looking at a lot of evidence, the initial excavator of Rakhi Gadi labeled this particular mound as the center of lapidary. So, it was known as a craft area. And although they have excavated only a small area of the site, the evidence was strong enough to support that particular label.

So when we started excavating, our objective was not exactly to look at that. Of course, it sort of comes in the package, right? But our idea was to look at the settlement plan because rakigadi is so big and we know that dholavira and other sites like banavali they have they although they follow this traditional harappan things like you know the brick sides are same and then their streets will be intersecting at right angle but there are certain aspects that they altered as well like for instance banawali the shape of the settlement was different okay so it didn't had streets intersecting at right angle it had streets which were sort of in a radial pattern like the

rays of the sun so they were the center of the at the center there is a city center or something and from there the streets are radiating in different directions, cardinal directions. So Manavale sort of opened eyes of scholars and archaeologists that look in Harappan, we don't always have to go by the book. There are certain things which are out of syllabus also. We need to open our mind and go. When we are excavating, we need to sort of keep that in our mind. and go when we are excavating we need to sort of keep that in our mind and looking at Dhola Veera also you have reservoirs around the settlement because you know they have to manage water there's scarcity of water in Kach even today so looking at all these aspects looking

at different excavations we wanted to know what exactly is the characteristic of Rakhi Gali you know that was the purpose of the entire team and i had many many conversations with our director just before we started excavating because we needed to be on the same page our idea was not to just collect antiquities or collect artifacts or objects or pottery our objective was to understand how the settlement is a interside and interside connected b what is the nature of this town planning because the rakhi gadi was excavated in bits and pieces there is no continuous excavation uh as in the case you know if you see the example of harappa monjidharo there is continuous excavation for few field seasons even mehar garit was excavated for over

10 years uh you know dholavira was excavated for 10 years so when you have continuous excavation you know where to pick up from in the next field season but when you have scattered excavation it's very difficult to pick up the pieces and the information sort of gets lost in the translation because you there's a lot of unpublished data also in the middle so you have to fill in that gap and then move forward so our plan was that and when we started excavating i would find these small artifacts like small debitage finished beads uh raw material as well a lot of polished stones and along with that i started I ended up finding a major street of which and actually I was excavating the street and I found out after two weeks into excavation that this is not a pit

this is a street because you know by then I was able to trace the two walls so there are two walls on the opposite end and I was in the middle so for me to reach on the opposite side of you know on these walls it sort of took me two weeks or something so once we have expanded the excavation and at the end of the excavation we found that the walls are lined with these big thick mud brick sun-baked brick walls which are about 1 meter wide and they are intersecting each other at right angle and these walls are enclosing the settlement area. So on the either side of the wall, so there are two walls on the either side you have structures and when we took the vertical trench we found that this street is right from the

early phase of Machoharapal. So when we look at the stratigraphy, we know this was about, the deposit of the street is about four meters in thickness. And then there were soakage pits at corners of the street. So not one street, but at every corner there is soakage pit. So that was the first season where we left at and in the other mound we excavated mound number two uh three sorry and that mound was never excavated due to many reasons and dr manjul decided to excavate that mound and when he excavated the mound they found a baked brick wall which was about 10 11 meters in running now as i mentioned earlier also this is a reason where they will choose mud

bricks than big bricks and big bricks they will only use where you know they have to build a well drainage or you know if you can afford you can buy it and you can use it so in this particular mound and this mound was larger in terms of the thickness not the spread so mound number one was spread but it didn't had thickness it had about seven meter deposit mound number three two and four they are quite high in terms of the thickness is quite elaborate about 18 meters if i go by the previous data about 16 to 18 meters so mound number three was also about 13 to 14 meters high, right? So, we started excavating at the slope and they found a lot of big brick structures. There was a drainage as well.

So, the first season was all about streets and drains, really, for us. So, but what was interesting was at the same time period, if you look at the same context, if you look at, or the same MSL, how two different sites had the settlement pattern was a little different.

But the first one season was not enough to understand that completely. So we excavated, obviously, the second time as well. Well it sounds like therefore the amount of archaeology that is coming out of Rakigari the amount you must be learning about this early stage of the Harappan civilization and as you say the materials that they have the structure of the towns how they're not all identical in their urban layout

and you know the connections that they had and i guess it must be also looking at other things such as pottery and i know there's terracotta some quite rare metals as well as their gold as well there's a wealth of artifacts that are starting to be unearthed which bodes really exciting for future seasons to learn more about rakigari and its place in the whole of the harappan civilization yeah we really need to excavate more and we need to continue excavating see what as i mentioned if we stop excavating another team picks up there's sort of this gap in research that is very difficult to fill in so we need to excavate the site for a few seasons at least five seasons and i'm just saying it's minimum five seasons

because the site is really big. We also excavate the burial site of Rakhi Gadi and it was never reported by any of the scholars earlier but the burial which was of mature Harappan was on early Harappan settlement. So early Harappan abandoned that area and have gone to where the big mounds are and that area which was abandoned by early settlements was used as a burial ground. So this particular piece of information is also very interesting because this shows that the early harappan was also spread in a large area at Rakhi Gari, not just mature harappan.

So there are a lot of research questions that are coming up. Our objective is still the same. We are just, you know, as we excavate, we are coming closer up our objective is still the same we are just you know as we excavate we are coming closer to our objective we are still aiming at understanding how these different mounds that we in the 21st century have to you know given them numbers we have numbered them how they were connected so inter site relation intra site relation is very important. The settlement relationship is very important to understand. We don't know, you know, we know in Dholavira, there were gates, you know, to enter a citadel and all of that.

We don't know anything about Rakhi Gadi. And also the challenge is that there is a huge modern population on the mound. So it's very difficult to do the work when a large chunk of the site is under modern habitation. Well, let's see, therefore, what happens in the years ahead. Disha, this has been brilliant. I have so many questions I could ask still. I know we haven't even got Sinoli and the chariots.

That might have to be for another episode. I mean, lastly, because we do really have to wrap up now with time, quickly, I've got to ask me, do we know what ultimately happens to the Harappan civilization? About 2000 BC, a lot of changes started to happen. We know that the trade matrix that I was talking about is becoming very weak. It's disrupted. It could be because of a lot of reasons. Environmental changes is one. The change in the political situation of the Western civilization could be one the changes there also affect the trade right because they are the ones who are demanding these products

that could be one but the weakening of the trade matrix sort of led to a lot of change in the settlement now people started going back to the localization era and also in the ghaghar hakara we know that the environmental conditions changed rapidly around this time and people started abandoning the settlements right about 2000 to 1900 BCE and that is the reason why in the Ghaghar Hakhra region we don't have late Harappan we have only mature Harappan so we don't have the de-urbanized phase of Harappan in that region because they're shifting to different places where there are more resources or also job opportunities also perhaps so we have some idea about what's

happening in the late harappan period but we really need to focus on you know what is a connection between the late harappan and the other cultures as well the cultures that followed or perhaps the contemporary cultures and i think to answer these questions we need to look at the contemporary cultures right from the mature harappan period well as you've highlighted very well throughout the episode as well you know this culture this civilization it wasn't living in isolation and it's really interesting once again we've gone full circle with those trade connections and the importance of those connections too disha this has been absolutely brilliant as mentioned i wish i could ask more questions but we to wrap up now. And it just goes for me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today. Thank you so much for having me. It's been

fun talking about, you know, Harappan civilization with you. Well, there you go. There was Dr. Disha Aluwalia talking all things the Harappan civilization. I hope you enjoyed today's episode last things for me if you have enjoyed the episode and you've been enjoying the ancients so far you want to help us out when you know what you can do you can leave us a lovely rating on apple podcast on spotify wherever you get your podcast from it really helps us as we continue to grow the ancients and take it to even greater heights. But that's enough from me. I am off to explore the ancient Nabataean centre of Hegra this morning,

and I will see you in the next episode.