Early urban centres
A civilisation here means a way of life with cities, crafts, trade and some kind of rule. The Harappan Civilisation is named after Harappa, the first site found. It is also called the Indus Valley Civilisation.
When and where
- Early Harappan cultures came before it (villages and small towns).
- Mature Harappan: about 2600 to 1900 BCE. This is the time of the big cities.
- Late Harappan: after 1900 BCE, smaller rural settlements.
Sites spread along the Indus and its branches, the Ghaggar-Hakra river bed, Gujarat and further. Big sites: Harappa, Mohenjodaro, Dholavira, Kalibangan, Rakhigarhi, Lothal. Small sites like Nageshwar and Balakot were near the sea (for shell).
Food and farming
People ate wheat, barley, lentils, chickpea, sesame, millets (Gujarat) and some rice. Bones show cattle, sheep, goat, buffalo and pig, plus fish and wild animals. Terracotta plough models and a ploughed field at Kalibangan show ploughing. Canals (Shortughai), wells and reservoirs (Dholavira) gave water.
Planning, crafts and seals
Town planning
Mohenjodaro had two parts. The citadel was smaller and built on a high mud-brick platform. It had special buildings like the Great Bath (a brick tank made watertight with bitumen) and a large building often called a warehouse. The lower town had houses. Streets ran in a grid. Drains were planned first and houses came later. Bricks followed a fixed ratio (length : width : height = 4 : 2 : 1). Houses faced inner courtyards, with no windows on the street side, and many had their own bathroom and well.
Crafts
Chanhudaro was almost entirely a craft town. Craftspeople made beads (carnelian, jasper, crystal, faience, steatite), shell bangles and ladles, copper and bronze tools, and pottery. Raw materials came from far: copper from Rajasthan (Khetri) and Oman, carnelian from Gujarat, lapis lazuli from Afghanistan (Shortughai), gold from south India.
Weights
Weights were small cubes of chert, with no marks. Lower weights doubled (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32…), heavier ones followed the decimal system. The same system in many cities shows careful control of exchange.
Seals and script
Seals were usually square, made of steatite, with an animal and a short line of signs. Pressed on clay over a sack's knot, the sealing proved the goods were untouched and showed who sent them. The script had about 375 to 400 signs, was written right to left, and is still not deciphered. Harappan goods reached Oman (Magan), and Mesopotamian texts speak of Meluhha, probably the Harappan region.
Social life, rulers and the end
Burials: most were simple pits; a few graves had copper mirrors, beads or shell. So wealth differences existed but were not huge. Hoards of gold and costly beads also show rich owners.
Who ruled? Nobody knows for sure. The planned towns, standard bricks and weights suggest someone took big decisions. Some think a ruling class or priest-king lived in the citadel; others think there were many rulers or none. The 'priest-king' is only a label given by archaeologists to a stone statue.
The end: by about 1900 BCE many cities were given up. Suggested causes: climate change, rivers drying up or shifting, floods, deforestation and the collapse of the central authority that held the system together.
ASI and historians on Harappa
The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) was set up in 1861. Its first head, Alexander Cunningham, saw a Harappan seal in 1875 but did not know how old it was. In 1921 Daya Ram Sahni dug at Harappa and in 1922 R.D. Banerji at Mohenjodaro. In 1924 John Marshall, the ASI head, told the world about a new, very old civilisation.
Marshall dug in equal horizontal units across a mound and ignored soil layers, so finds from different times got mixed. R.E.M. Wheeler (1944) followed the stratigraphy (layers of soil) instead. After 1947 most big sites were in Pakistan, so Indian archaeologists found many new ones (Kalibangan, Lothal, Rakhigarhi, Dholavira).
How historians read the past
- They classify finds by material (stone, metal) and use.
- They use the context: where a thing was found tells what it was for.
- They compare with present-day crafts (like bead-making in Khambhat).
- They are careful with religion: many 'mother goddess' figurines and the 'proto-Shiva' seal are guesses based on later ideas.
Key formulas and definitions
- Mature Harappan phase = c. 2600 to 1900 BCE
- Citadel = raised, smaller, walled part; lower town = houses
- Brick ratio = 4 : 2 : 1
- Weights: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16… (binary), then decimal
- Seal = steatite, animal + signs; sealing = its print on clay
- Script: about 400 signs, right to left, not deciphered
- Stratigraphy = digging layer by layer; deeper = older
- ASI = Archaeological Survey of India (1861)
Worked examples
1. Why do historians say Harappan cities were planned before they were built?
Step 1: drains run straight under streets that meet at right angles. Step 2: houses line up along the drains, so the drains came first. Step 3: the citadel stands on a platform built before the buildings on it. Step 4: bricks have the same ratio in many cities. So someone planned the layout in advance.
2. What does a doubling set of weights tell us about Harappan trade?
Step 1: weights 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 are exact and look the same in far-off cities. Step 2: a trader in Lothal and one in Harappa weighed goods the same way. Step 3: this needs rules, maybe checked by a ruling group. So exchange was regulated, not random.
3. Explain why Marshall's method of digging was a problem.
Step 1: he dug in equal flat strips across the whole mound. Step 2: but the ground is not flat; old layers dip and rise. Step 3: so things from different periods were collected together as if they were from one time. Step 4: Wheeler dug by soil layers and fixed this.
4. A grave has a copper mirror and shell rings; another has only pots. What can we infer?
Step 1: copper and shell were costly and came from far. Step 2: so the first person (or family) had more wealth. Step 3: but most graves are simple, so the gap was small. Inference: some social difference existed.
Common mistakes
- Saying the Harappan script has been read. It is still not deciphered.
- Thinking the citadel was a king's palace for sure. We do not know who lived there; it had special public buildings.
- Mixing up seal and sealing. The seal is the carved stone; the sealing is its print on clay.
- Treating the 'priest-king' and 'mother goddess' labels as facts. They are guesses by archaeologists.