Bricks, Beads and Bones (Harappan Civilisation)

2.1 Core concepts

• Terminology and time-span: The Harappan Civilisation, named after Harappa where it was first identified, is also called the Indus Valley Civilisation; total span c. 6000 BCE–1300 BCE divided into Early Harappan (6000–2600 BCE), Mature Harappan (2600–1900 BCE, urban) and Late Harappan (1900–1300 BCE, decadent) (NCERT §Terminologies, p. 1).
• Geographical spread: Distinctive Harappan pottery, baked/unbaked bricks, seals, weights, beads and copper/bronze articles are found across Afghanistan, Baluchistan, Sind, Punjab (Pakistan) and Indian states of J&K, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, UP, Gujarat and Maharashtra (NCERT §Terminologies, p. 1; Map 1, p. 2).
• Number of sites and five major cities: Over 2000 Harappan sites have been discovered; nearly two-thirds lie in the Saraswati basin; five major cities are Rakhigarhi, Mohenjodaro, Harappa, Dholavira and Ganweriwala (NCERT §Harappan Settlements box, p. 2).
• Subsistence — crops: Grains found at sites include wheat, barley, lentil, chickpea and sesame; millets appear at Gujarat sites; rice finds are relatively rare (NCERT §2, pp. 2–3).
• Subsistence — animals: Bones of domesticated cattle, sheep, goat, buffalo and pig; also wild boar, deer and gharial, plus fish and fowl; whether Harappans hunted or obtained meat from hunting communities is uncertain (NCERT §2, p. 3).
• Agricultural technology: Bull representations on seals and terracotta plus terracotta plough models from Cholistan and Banawali (Haryana) suggest ox-drawn ploughing; a ploughed field with two sets of furrows at right angles was found at Kalibangan (Rajasthan), indicating two crops grown together; canals at Shortughai (Afghanistan), wells, and Dholavira water reservoirs imply irrigation in semi-arid lands (NCERT §2.1, pp. 3–4).
• Mohenjodaro layout: Settlement is divided into a smaller but higher Citadel (walled, built on mud-brick platforms) and a larger but lower Lower Town (also walled, with buildings on platforms); platform construction alone is estimated at four million person-days (NCERT §3, pp. 5–6).
• Standardised bricks: Sun-dried or baked bricks across all Harappan settlements followed a uniform ratio — length and breadth four times and twice the height respectively (NCERT §3, p. 6).
• Drainage: Streets and drains were laid out first along an approximate grid pattern intersecting at right angles, then houses built along them; every house was connected to street drains; main channels were brick-set in mortar with loose-brick (sometimes limestone) covers for cleaning; house drains emptied into sumps/cesspits; drains were also found at smaller settlements like Lothal (NCERT §3.1, pp. 6–7).
• Domestic architecture: Houses centred on a courtyard, no ground-floor windows on outer walls, main entrance not giving direct view of interior, every house had its own brick-paved bathroom, many had staircases and wells; Mohenjodaro had about 700 wells (NCERT §3.2, p. 7).
• Citadel structures: Citadel held the warehouse and the Great Bath — a large rectangular tank in a courtyard surrounded by a corridor; two flights of steps on north and south, made watertight with bricks set on edge and gypsum mortar; a smaller building to its north had eight bathrooms; the Great Bath was probably meant for a special ritual bath (NCERT §3.3, p. 8).
• Citadel variations: At Dholavira and Lothal the entire settlement was fortified with internal walls; Lothal's Citadel was not walled off but built at a height (NCERT §Citadels box, p. 6).
• Burials: Dead were generally laid in pits, sometimes brick-lined; some graves contained pottery, ornaments (jewellery for both sexes), and occasionally copper mirrors; an ornament of three shell rings, a jasper bead and hundreds of micro beads was found near a male skull at Harappa cemetery; overall Harappans did not bury precious things with the dead (NCERT §4.1, p. 9).
• Luxuries and hoards: Utilitarian objects (querns, pottery, needles, flesh-rubbers) are distributed throughout settlements; luxuries (rare/non-local/complex-tech objects like faience pots) and gold jewellery (all from hoards) concentrate in large settlements like Mohenjodaro and Harappa (NCERT §4.2, pp. 9–10).
• Craft production at Chanhudaro: A tiny site (under 7 hectares vs Mohenjodaro 125 ha) almost exclusively devoted to bead-making, shell-cutting, metal-working, seal-making and weight-making (NCERT §5, p. 10).
• Bead materials and techniques: Carnelian, jasper, crystal, quartz, steatite, copper, bronze, gold, shell, faience, terracotta; steatite was soft, easily worked, and could be moulded as paste — steatite micro beads remain a technological puzzle; carnelian's red colour was obtained by firing yellowish raw material; specialised drills at Chanhudaro, Lothal and Dholavira; Nageshwar and Balakot specialised in shell objects (NCERT §5, pp. 10–11).
• Procuring materials: Locally available clay; outside materials included stone, timber and metal; transport by bullock carts (terracotta models), riverine routes along Indus/tributaries, coastal routes; Harappans established settlements at raw-material sources — Nageshwar/Balakot (shell), Shortughai (Afghanistan, lapis lazuli), Lothal (carnelian from Bharuch, steatite from south Rajasthan and north Gujarat, metal from Rajasthan); expeditions to Khetri (copper) and south India (gold); Ganeshwar-Jodhpura culture probably supplied copper (NCERT §6 & §6.1, p. 12).
• Long-distance trade: Copper probably also from Oman — both Omani and Harappan artefacts contain nickel; a Harappan jar with black clay coating found in Oman; Mesopotamian texts refer to copper from Magan (probably Oman) and mention Dilmun (Bahrain), Magan and Meluhha (Harappan region); Meluhha exported carnelian, lapis lazuli, copper, gold and varieties of wood; communication probably by sea; Dilmun weights followed the Harappan standard; depictions of boats appear on seals (NCERT §6.2, pp. 13–14).
• Seals and sealings: Seals/sealings facilitated long-distance communication — a bag's knot was sealed with wet clay impressed by seal(s); intact sealing meant the bag was untampered and identified the sender (NCERT §7.1, p. 15).
• Script: Harappan seals usually carry a line of writing (probably name + title); script is undeciphered, not alphabetical (375–400 signs, too many for an alphabet); written right-to-left (wider spacing on right, cramping on left); longest inscription has about 26 signs; writing also on copper tools, rims of jars, copper/terracotta tablets, jewellery, bone rods, and an ancient signboard at Dholavira (NCERT §7.2, p. 15).
• Weights: Usually made of chert, generally cubical with no markings; lower denominations binary (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32) and higher decimal (160, 200, 320, 640); metal scale-pans also found (NCERT §7.3, pp. 15–16).
• Authority — evidence: Extraordinary uniformity of pottery, seals, weights and bricks (same ratio from Jammu to Gujarat), strategic location of settlements and large-scale labour mobilisation suggest complex decision-making (NCERT §8, p. 16).
• Authority — theories: A large building at Mohenjodaro was labelled a "palace" but had no spectacular finds; a stone statue is called the "priest-king" by parallel with Mesopotamia; competing views — (a) no rulers, everyone equal; (b) several rulers, one per city; (c) a single state — supported by uniformity and planning; possibly some form of democratic system (NCERT §8.1, pp. 16–17).
• Decline: By c. 1800 BCE most Mature Harappan sites in regions like Cholistan were abandoned; simultaneous expansion into Gujarat, Haryana and western UP; in surviving Late Harappan sites — disappearance of weights, seals, special beads, writing, long-distance trade, craft specialisation; deteriorating house construction; rural "successor cultures"; suggested causes — climatic change, deforestation, excessive floods, shifting/drying rivers, overuse of landscape; none alone explains civilisation-wide collapse; the unifying element (perhaps the Harappan state) ended (NCERT §9, p. 17).
• Discovery — Cunningham: Alexander Cunningham, first Director-General of the ASI, in 1875 noted that bricks taken by robbers from Harappa were enough to lay tracks for "about 100 miles" of Lahore-Multan railway; he failed to grasp the seal's age because his framework relied on Chinese Buddhist pilgrim accounts and assumed Indian history began with Ganga-valley cities (NCERT §The plight of Harappa box, p. 6; §10.1, p. 19).
• Discovery — Sahni, Banerji, Marshall: Daya Ram Sahni found seals at Harappa in older layers in the early 20th century; Rakhal Das Banerji found similar seals at Mohenjodaro; in 1924 John Marshall (Director-General, ASI) announced the new Indus civilisation, contemporaneous with Mesopotamia ("Marshall left India three thousand years older than he had found her"); Marshall excavated by horizontal units, ignoring stratigraphy (NCERT §10.2, p. 20).
• Discovery — Wheeler: R.E.M. Wheeler became Director-General in 1944 and rectified the stratigraphy problem; ex-army brigadier; in 1947 he tried to link Mohenjodaro skeletons with the Rigveda (Indra as puramdara the fort-destroyer) — "On circumstantial evidence, Indra stands accused"; George Dales (1960s) demonstrated the skeletons were not from one period, debunking the "Mohenjodaro massacre" (NCERT Source 3, p. 18; §10.3, p. 21).
• Discovery — post-Partition Indian sites: Kalibangan, Lothal, Rakhi Garhi and Dholavira have been discovered/excavated since 1947; specialists from subcontinent and abroad now jointly work at Harappa and Mohenjodaro using modern scientific techniques (NCERT §10.3, p. 21).
• Recent archaeogenetics — Rakhigarhi: The biggest Harappan city (550 ha) in Hisar district, Haryana; DNA extracted from skeletons by Deccan College Pune with CCMB Hyderabad and Harvard Medical College; indicates Harappans are indigenous, genetic roots to 10,000 BCE, no large-scale Aryan immigration, unbroken 5000-year continuity; reconstructed 3D facial features resemble modern Haryana population (NCERT Source 3, p. 18).
• Religion and interpretation: Terracotta figurines of women with head-dresses interpreted as mother goddesses; the "priest-king" statue; Great Bath and fire altars at Kalibangan and Lothal assigned ritual significance; "proto-Shiva" seal of a cross-legged figure surrounded by animals — but in Rigveda, Rudra is neither Pashupati nor a yogi, so the figure may be a shaman; conical stones classified as lingas may have been gamesmen (Mackay) (NCERT §11.2, pp. 23–24).

2.2 Definitions to memorise

2.3 Diagrams / processes to remember

• Fig. 1.1 — Harappan seal: Steatite, with animal motif and undeciphered script; the most distinctive Harappan artefact (p. 1).
• Map 1 — Mature Harappan sites: Locations of Harappa, Mohenjodaro, Kalibangan, Banawali, Rakhigarhi, Dholavira, Lothal, Sutkagendor, Chanhudaro, Nageshwar, Balakot (p. 2).
• Fig. 1.5 — Reservoir at Dholavira: Masonry water reservoir — evidence for water storage in semi-arid lands (p. 4).
• Fig. 1.7 — Layout of Mohenjodaro: Citadel (smaller, higher, west) and Lower Town (larger, lower, east) on grid pattern (p. 5).
• Fig. 1.9 — Isometric drawing of a large Mohenjodaro house: Courtyard plan with well in room 6 (p. 7).
• Fig. 1.10 — Plan of the Citadel: Shows Great Bath, warehouse and associated structures (p. 8).
• Map 3 — Harappan civilisation and West Asia: Shows Mesopotamia (Uruk, Ur), Dilmun, Magan, Meluhha, Shortughai, Sutkagendor, Lothal — the long-distance trade network (p. 13).
• Fig. 1.23 — "Priest-king": Stone statue, seated, named by parallel with Mesopotamian priest-kings (p. 16).
• Fig. 1.27 — "Proto-Shiva" seal: Cross-legged figure surrounded by animals (p. 23).
• Timeline 2 — Major developments in Harappan archaeology: 1875 Cunningham; 1921 Sahni at Harappa; 1922 Mohenjodaro begins; 1946 Wheeler at Harappa; 1955 S.R. Rao at Lothal; 1960 B.B. Lal & B.K. Thapar at Kalibangan; 1990 R.S. Bisht at Dholavira; 1997 Amrendra Nath at Rakhigarhi; 2013 Vasant Shinde's archaeogenetic research (p. 25).

2.5 Timeline / Key events

2.4 Common confusions / NTA trap points

• Phase dates: Early Harappan 6000–2600 BCE, Mature 2600–1900 BCE, Late 1900–1300 BCE. NTA often swaps "Mature" with "Late" or shifts the 1900 BCE boundary.
• Five major cities: Rakhigarhi, Mohenjodaro, Harappa, Dholavira, Ganweriwala. Kalibangan, Lothal, Chanhudaro and Banawali are NOT among the five — they appear as distractors.
• Citadel vs Lower Town: Citadel = smaller, higher, west; Lower Town = larger, lower, east. Both were walled at Mohenjodaro. At Dholavira/Lothal the whole settlement was fortified; Lothal's Citadel was built at a height but not walled off.
• Weights system: Lower denominations are binary (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32), higher are decimal (160, 200, 320, 640) — material is chert. NTA may flip "binary/decimal" between high and low.
• Brick ratio: Length:breadth:height = 4:2:1 (i.e., length = 4× height, breadth = 2× height) — uniform across all sites.
• Discovery sequence: Cunningham noted a seal (1875) but missed its age → Sahni excavated Harappa (1921) → Banerji at Mohenjodaro → Marshall announced (1924) → Wheeler corrected stratigraphy (1944). Don't confuse Marshall (announcer) with Cunningham (first DG ASI).
• Magan / Meluhha / Dilmun: Magan = Oman (copper), Meluhha = Harappan region, Dilmun = Bahrain. Frequently mixed up in match-the-following.
• "Mohenjodaro massacre": Proposed by Wheeler ("On circumstantial evidence, Indra stands accused"); refuted by George Dales in the 1960s.