BRICKS, BEADS AND

BONES
BY A K S H AYA PA N D E Y
CLASS-12TH (HUMANITIES)
 THE HARAPPAN CIVILISATION
• The Harappan civilization or Indus valley civilization is
mainly found in the north western region of south
asia. Expanding from north east afghanistan to
Pakistan and north west india.

• Harappa was a city in the Indus Valley Civilisation

that flourished around 2600 to 1900 BC in the
Western part of South Asia.

• The Indus Valley Civilisation is also called the

Harappan culture. Archaeologists use the term
'culture' for distinctive objects which are different in • The cities are noted for their urban
style and found within a specific geographical area planning, baked brick houses, well
and period of time. Objects belonging to the developed drainage systems. water supply
Harappan culture such as seals, beads, weights and systems and exclusive craft production
stone blades were found from Afghanistan, Jammu,
Baluchistan and Gujarat
• The Harrapan Civilisation is sometimes called
the Mature Harappan culture to distinguish it
from the earlier and mature culture i.e. Early
Harappan and late Harappan culture
 SUBSISTENCE STRATEGIES IN HARAPPAN CIVILISATION
There were many subsistence strategies in Harappan civilisation, out of which
agriculture and pastoralism were most significant.
AGRICULTURE

The Harappans ate plants and animal products (fish, fowl). Grains lik
wheat, barley, lentil, chickpea, sesame and millets are found from
sites in Gujarat (Lothal). Rice is rarely found. Harappans also ate wid
range of animal products.

• Representation on seals and terracotta sculpture indicate that the

bull was known and oxen were used for ploughing the field.
Agricultural Technologies Terracotta models of the plough are found in Cholistan and
Banawali (Haryana)

• Evidence of a ploughed field was found at Kalibangan (Rajasthan).

This ploughed field had two sets of furrows at right angles which
suggests that here two different crops were grown together. There
are evidence of copper tools, stone blades tools, however
archaeologist are not sure what kind of tools were used for
agriculture.
• Most Harappan sites are located in semi-arid lands Irrigation was required for
agriculture, Traces of canals have been found at the Harappan site of Shortughai in
Afghanistan It is also likely that water drawn from wells was used for irrigatiori. Water
reservoirs found in Dholavira (Gujarat) many have been used to store water for
agriculture.

PASTORALISM AND HUNTING

 Animal bones that of cattle, sheep, goat,

buffalo and pig were found at Harappan sites
which indicate that these animals were
domesticated. Bones of deer and gharial are
also found, but it is not clear whether the
Harappans hunted these animals themselves
or obtained meat from other hunting
communities, Bones of fish and fowl are also
found
MOHENJODARO: A PLANNED URBAN CENTRE OF HARAPPAN CIVILISATION

Mohenjodaro was built in the 26th century BC. It was one of the largest
cities of the ancient Indus Valley Civilisation. Mohenjodaro was the most
advanced city of its time built with planning. The city was divided into two
parts citadel (smaller but higher settlement) and the lower town (larger
but lower settlement)
The Citadel

• The citadel was walled which meant that it was separated from the lower town. The buildings were constructed
on mud brick platforms. There were variations in Harappan settlements.

• Dholavira and Lothal (Gujarat), the entire settlement was fortified and sections within the town were also
separated by walls. The citadel within Lothal was not walled off, but was built at a height.
• There are structures in citadel that were probably used for special public purposes. These included the
warehouse and the Great Bath . The great bath was a large rectangular tank in a courtyard surrounded by a
corridors on all four sides. There were two flights of steps on the North and the South to reach the tank , it was
made watertight by setting bricks on their edges and using the plaster of gypsum. On three sides of it there
were rooms, in one of which was a large well. Water from the tank flowed into a huge drain.
• In the North side there was a smaller building having eight bathrooms, four on each side of its corridor. From
each bathroom, drains were coming out and these were connected to a drain that ran along the corridor. Seeing
the uniqueness of the structure, scholars suggest that it was meant for a kind of special ritual bath.
The Lower Town
The lower town was organised on a grid system which served as foundations. It
was also walled. Archaeologists believe that it was probably the city where most
of the people lived and worked. Bricks used for settlements were sun-dried or
baked. They were of standardised ratio, where the length and breadth were four
times and twice the height respectively.

Drainage System
• One of the most distinctive features of Mohenjodaro was the
carefully planned drainage system. The streets and roads were laid
out in grid pattern, intersecting at right angles
• It was believed that streets with drains were built first and then the
houses were built along them. If domestic waste water had to flow
into the street drains, then every house was needed to have at
least one wall along a street.
• Limestone was used for the covers. House drains first empted into
a sump or cesspit into which solid matter settled while waste water
flowed out into the street drains. Long drainage channels were
provided at intervals with sumps. At Lothal, houses were built of
mud bricks and drains were made of burnt bricks.
 Domestic Architecture
• Most of the residential buildings were centered on a courtyard
with rooms on all sides. The courtyard was probably the centre of
activities such as cooking and weaving. There were no windows in
the walls along the ground level. The main entrance does not give
a direct view of the interior or the courtyard
• Every house had its own bathroom with drains connected through the walls to the street drains.
Some houses have remains of staircases to reach a second storey or the roof. Many houses had
wells, often in a room that could be reached from outside and used by passers-by. Total number of
wells in Mohenjodaro was about 700.

ART AND CRAFTS PRODUCTION

Chanhudaro is a small town which was famous for

craft
production. This city was exclusively busy in craft production like bead-
making, shell-cutting, metal working, seal-making and weight making.

The materials used in making all these crafts were carnelian(beautiful red
, jasper, crystal, quartz. copper,
colour) bronze, gold, shell, faience and terracotta The beads were made of
different shapes and forms like disc-shaped, cylindrical, spherical, barrel-shaped and segmented.
Special drills were found at Chanhudaro Lothal and Dholavira.The cities like Balakot and Nageshwar
were specialised centres for making shell objects like bangles, a large long handled spoon with a cup-
shaped bowl (ladle) and inlay.
 Centres for Procuring Materials

Materials for some craft production were locally available and some
materials were transported from outside the alluvial plain. Terracotta
toy models of bullock carts are found. This suggests that bullock cart
was one of the important means of transport at that time. Riverine
routes were also probably used. For procuring raw materials,
expeditions were sent to other areas.
Material Cities Evidences of Harappan Contacts with Distant
Lands
• Shell • Nageshwar, balkot
• Shortughai
• Evidences were Traces of nickel have been found after
• Blue stone
(Afghanistan) chemical analyses of both the Omani copper and Harappan
• Carnelian • Bharuch in Gujarat
• artefacts.
Steatite • South rajasthan
• Metal and north Gujarat • A large Harappan jar coated with a thick layer of black clay
• Copper • Rajasthan has been found at Omani sites. It is possible that the
• Gold • Khetri (rajasthan )
• South India
Harappans exchanged the contents of these vessels for
Omani copper. Some data show that Mesopotamia
transported the copper from Magan, Oman
• Mesopotamian sites also contain traces of nickel.
• Mesopotamia texts mention contact with regions named Dilmun (island of Bahrain), Magan and
Meluhha.
• Evidences of depiction of ship and boats on seal
 Seals, Script and Weights of Harappan
Civilisation
Seals and
Sealings
• Seals and sealings were used to facilitate long distance communication. Before sending the
product to another place, it was ried with rope and on the knot, some wet clay was affixed. This
was done so that one or more seals were pressed on it, leaving an impression. If the product
reached with its seal intact, it means it had reached safely. The seal also conveyed the identity of
the sender.The Harappan seal is the most distinctive artefact (an object or ornament or tool of
ancient time) of Harappan civilisation. The seal is made of a stone called steatite (the mineral
talc in consolidated form). The seals also contain animal motifs (shapes) and signs from a script.
• A cylinder seal found in Mesopotamia has humped bull motif which can be derived from the
Indus region. The round Persian Gulf seal found in Bahrain sometimes carries Harappan motifs

Script
Harappan seals usually have a line of writing and probably contain the name and title of the owner.
Harappan script was very difficult to understand. Scholars have suggested that the motif (generally an
animal) conveyed a meaning to those people who could not read.Most inscriptions were short and the
longest contained about 26 signs. The script was written from right to left. Writing has been found on
seals, copper tools, rims of jars, bone rods, copper and terracotta tablets and jewellery bone rods and
an ancient signboard. The script was not alphabetical and had many signs, somewhere between 375
and 400. The Harappan scripts remain undeciphered to date.
Weights
In Harappan civilisation, exchanges were regulated by a precise system of weights, usually made of a cubical
stone called chert. The lower denominations of weights were binary Le., 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, etc. upto 12,800, while
the higher denominations followed the decimal system.The smaller weights were probably used for weighing
jewellery and beads. Metal scale-pans have also been found. Local 'Dilmun' weights followed the Harappan
standard.
SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC DIFFERENCES IN HARAPPAN
Civilisation

Archaeologists use certain strategies to find out social or economic differences

amongst people living within a particular culture. By studying burials and
artefacts they found the social differences in Harappan Civilisation

Burials

As burials in Harappan sires, the dead were generally laid in pits. Sometimes, differences were found
in the way the burial pit was made. Some graves of Harappan Civilisation contain pottery (poes or
objects made of fired clay) and ornaments. This indicates that Harappan people had a belief that
these items could be used in the afterlife. Jewellery has been found in burials of both men and
women. Their ornaments consisted of three shell rings, a semi-precious stone (jasper) and hundreds
of micro beads. Precious things were not found with the dead, so it seems that they did not believe
in burying precious things with the dead. In one such example, dead were buried with copper
mirrors.
Artefacts
It is another strategy to identify social differences. These can be clasified as utilitarian (designed to
be useful rather than attractive) and luxuries. Utilitarian It includes objects of daily use that were
made of stone or clay like a stone-hand mill for grinding corn (querns), pottery, needles and body
scrubbers (flesh-rubbers), etc. These were easily found in the settlements. Luxuries The objects were
luxuries if they were rare or made costly or with complicated technologies. Little pots of faience
were precious. Faience was made of ground sand or silica mixed with colour and gum and then fired.
The precious things were mostly found in big cities like Mohenjodaro and Harappa. Gold jewelleries
were found in Harappan city. It was recovered from hoards (objects kept carefully by people often
inside containers such as pots). Miniature pots of faience, perhaps used as perfume bottles are
mostly found in Mohenjodaro and Harappa.
 End of the Harappan Civilisation

In 1800 BC, most of the Harappan sites in regions such as Cholistan had
become uninhabited and gradually there was an expansion of population into
new settlements in Gujarat, Haryana and West Uttar Pradesh.
After, 1900 BC, there was a marked change in material culture with the disappearance of the artefacts
of the civilisation like weights, seals and special beads. Writing, long-distance trade and craft
specialisationshad disappeared. House construction techniques deteriorated. These artefacts and
settlements indicate a rural way of life which is called late Harappan or successor cultures.

Reasons for End of the Harappan Civilisation

• Several explanations have been put forward about the reason for the
end of the civilisation. These range from climate change, deforestation,
excessive floods, shifting or drying up of rivers and overuse of land.
These causes were responsible for the end of certain settlements bur
not for the end of the entire civilisation.

• The end of the Harappan Civilisation was evidenced by the

disappearance of seals, scripts, distinctive beads and pottery, the shift
from a standardised weight system to the use of local weights and the
decline and abandonment of cities
Discovering the Harappan
Civilisation

Alexander Cunningham
• He was the first Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). He was often called
the father of Indian archaeology.He began archaeological excavations in the mid-nineteenth
century.
• He used the accounts left by Chinese Buddhist pilgrims. These pilgrims had visited the Indian
subcontinent between the 4th and 7th centuries CE to locate early settlements.
• He also collected, documented and translatedinscriptions found during his excavations.
• When he received a Harappan seal found by an Englishman, he unsuccessfully tried to place it in
the time frame between the 4th and 7th centuries CE, which caused confusion in his mind. Thus he
missed the significance of Harappa
Daya Ram Sahni
In the early decades of the 20th century, seals were discovered at Harappa by
Daya Ram Sahni

Rakhal Das Banerji

He also found similar seals at Mohenjodaro, leading to conjecture that these

sites were part of a single archaeological culture.
 John Marshall

He was the Director General of ASI. On the basis of discoveries of Daya Ram
Sahni and Rakhal Das Banerji, in 1924 he announced to the world the discovery
of a new civilisation in the Indus valley. He tended to excavate along regular
horizontal units, measured uniformly throughout the mound, ignoring the
stratigraphy of the site.
REM Wheeler He was the Director General of the ASI in 1944. He recognised
that it was necessary to follow the stratigraphy of the mound
mechanically rather than dighorizontal lines. He rectified the previous problems faced by the
along uniform
archaeologist
Problems of Piecing Together the Past

• It is not the Harappan script that helps in understanding

the ancient civilisation. Rather, it is material evidence that
allows archaeologists to better reconstruct Harappan life.
This material could be pottery, tools, ornaments,
household objects etc.
• Organic materials such as cloth, leather, wood and seeds
generally decompose, especially in tropical regions and
only stone, burnt clay, metal etc has survived.
 Classifying Finds have
Survived
One simple principle of classification is in terms of material such as stones, clay,
metal, bone ivory etc. The second is in terms of functions. Archaeologists have to
decide whether, for instance, an artefact is a tool or an ornament or both, or
something meant for ritual use. Sometimes, archaeologists have to take recourse
to indirect evidence.
• For example, though there are traces of cotton at some Harappan sites, but
there is dependance on indirect evidence including depictions in sculpture to
find out about clothing
Problems of
Interpretation
Reconstructing religious practices was also a problematic issue for
archaeologists. Every archaeologist thought that certain objects which
seemed unusual or unfamiliar had religious significance.These include
 Terracotta figurines of women, heavily jewelled with headdresses. These
are regarded as mother goddesses.
 Stone statuary (art of making statues) of man in standardised posture,
seated with one hand on the knee such as priest-king was also regarded
religious.
 Structures like Great Bath and fire altars found at Kalibangan and Lothal
also have had ritual significance.
 Plant motifs are thought to indicate nature worship. A One-horned animal
called the unicorn depicted on seals seem to be mythical.
 A figure shown seated cross-legged in a yogic posture and surrounded by
animals has been regarded as proto-Shiva
 Conical stone objects have been classified as lingas.
 The earliest religious text, ie. the Rigveda (1500-1000 BCE) mentioned a
god named Rudra, which was later used for Lord Shiva in later Puranic
literature.

ANCIENT AUTHORITY OF HARAPPAN SOCIETY

Complex decisions were taken and implemented in Harappan Society. There was no centre of
authority or person in power in Harappan society. The extraordinary uniformity of Harappan
artefacts is evident in pottery, seals, weights and bricks, suggesting some forms of authority and
governance
Palaces and Kings

A large building found at Mohenjodaro was labelled ax a palace by archaeologists

but no magnificent findings marked it as a palace. A stone statue was labelled
and continues to be known as Priest-King, an the archaeologists were familiar
with Mesopotamian history and its priest-kings.
According to some archaeologists, Harappan society had no rulers and everybody enjoyed equal
status. Some others suggest that there were separate rulers for different cities like Mohenjodaro
and Harappa. The planned settlements, the standardised ratio of brick size and the establishment
of settlements represents that the Harappan Civilisation had a single authority