Rural Harappan
site excavated in Kutch
Neha Madaan, TNN | Apr 8, 2012, 03.36AM IST
PUNE: Archaeologists from the city-basedDeccan College Post Graduate
and Research Institute and the Gujarat State Department of Archaeology,
recently excavated an entire settlement belonging to the late
mature Harappan period, dating back to 4,000 years, at Kotada-Bhadli,
a village located in Nakhatrana taluka of Kutch district in Gujarat.
The researchers said this is the first time they stumbled upon
an entire settlement of this period in India, instead of just
stray structures that were found in the past. The excavation exposed
a residential complex consisting of nine rooms, a fortification
wall and a bastion.
Prabodh Shirvalkar of the Deccan College, who headed the excavation
along with Y S Rawat, director, Gujarat State Department of Archaeology,
said: "This is primarily a rural site of the Harappan civilization.
Earlier, bigger urban sites such as Dholavira and Juni Karan have
been taken up to study the Harappan civilization. Thus, all of
the Harappan history is based on findings belonging to urban Harappan
settlements. However, it is important to study the civilization's
rural economy as well, without which the urban economy could have
never existed."
The find will help researchers understand the late mature phase,
which falls between 2,300 BC and 2,100 BC, more clearly. "Not
much work has been undertaken on this period. This site belongs
exclusively to the late mature phase, which will help us understand
this period better. We can also study this phase's paleoclimatic
conditions, intra-site settlement pattern and tradingnetworks,
among other things," he said. The findings will be used to
undertake comparative analysis of the different sites in Kutch,
establishing the relationship Kotada-Bhadli shared with them.
The second phase of the excavation, which began in January and
concluded in March, had the archaeologists exposing a residential
complex with nine rooms. "There are inter-communicating doors
within these rooms and the main entrance of the complex is on
the Western side. We found a large number of pottery, animal bones
and antiquities from these rooms," he said.
The list of antiquities comprises some carnelian, terracotta and
steatite beads, one small basalt weight, perforated disc and discs,
copper rings, shell bangles, crucibles (pots for copper smelting
purposes), and net sinkers made of shell suggesting the existence
of fishing activities then. "We also found a copper rod,
about 5-cm in length, with a tip wrapped in golden foil. Such
a rod has never been found before in all of Harappan civilization.
We therefore could not gauge its purpose and have no parallels
to compare it with," said Shirvalkar.
He added that a 35-metre open space stretches between the fortification
wall and the residential complex. "Previous excavations had
large number of structures inside the fortification. Here, on
the contrary, the complex takes the central position and is surrounded
with open space. This suggests that the residents undertook copper
smelting in the open space," he said.
The site falls on the trade route that starts from Dholavira in
Gujarat to lower Sindh of Pakistan. "Thus, the village may
have been used as a transit point by trade merchants in the past.
The open area may have, therefore, been a place for keeping their
goods," he said.
A fortification wall and a bastion have also been excavated from
the site. "Twelve more bastions - three on each side of the
fortification wall - are yet to be excavated. The width of the
wall, including the bastion, is 10 metres while the height is
5 metres. Everything is made of stone instead of mud bricks, which
suggest that the rural Harappans opted for natural, cheaper and
easily available resources," he said.
The researchers are also trying to understand the parameters
of the Harappan rural economy, a segment which has hitherto been
overlooked. "There have been several instances when smaller
Harappan sites have been compared to bigger urban Harappan settlements,
which have till now been treated as an archetype for all Harappan
settlements. However, comparisons between the two economies -
urban and rural - should not be drawn as they both differ considerably.
Hence we selected Kotada-Bhadli, in an attempt to define parameters
of the rural Harappan way of life," he said.
Bharat Dighe, Devadatta Phule, K Malap S Udaykumar, Kalyan Chakraborty,
Sutapa Lahiri, Tejal Ruikar and Jagriti Hazra from the Deccan
College Post-Graduate and Research Institute were also part of
the excavation team.
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Sarasvati
