Essay on Dates and Features of Pre-Harappan and Harappan

That even at this stage the cultivators knew about the plough. As cross furrows were visible, it can be inferred that two crops were raised in the field-a good evidence of intensive agriculture.

People of Kalibangan probably anticipated the Harappan norm of brick production and brick-laying. However, there was only occasional use of baked brick and the walls were not as thick as at the Mature Harappan sites.

Thus over a period of nearly three thousand years, cultivators colonized the alluvial plains of the Indus using tools of copper, bronze and stone, as well as the plough and wheeled transport.

Wheat, barley, lentil, peas, sesamum, linseed, dates and grapes were being cultivated. These people reared cattle, worshipped terracotta mother goddesses and the horned deity, some even surrounding their settlements with defensive walls.

As far as crafts are concerned, before the urban periods, there appears to have been only a modest use of copper bronze. Metal was used for bangles as well as rods or awls and the odd chisel. These were cold-hammered or cast in open moulds.

There is as yet little evidence of closed (two-piece) moulds or lost wax casting, or of soldering. Possible ivory bangles at early Amri, one carved-ivory ‘seal’ Rahman Dheri, and one elephant tusk with grooves at early Mehrgarh do not constitute adequate evidence for the development of the ivory-carver’s craft.

Steatite was in use in this period and the beginning had been made of baking and glazing and the use of steatite paste. Shell was certainly in use but not on the scale evident in the mature Harappan period.

Bead-making, use of the blue stones and the stone drill for perforating beads had begun. Faience is possibly attested for at Kot Dijian Sarai Khola Carnelian, the hardest of the stones used; appeal to have been shaped into long barrel beads.

As foil cotton cloth, no spindle whorl is reported at Mehrgarh, but only bone awls for stitching leather.

All these developments were taking place in the context of a much larger network of relationships with the civilizations of Persian Gulf and Mesopotamia) It was in the backdrop of these processes technological and ideological unification that Harappan civilisation emerged.

The increasingly efficient technology and the exploitation of the fertile plains of the Indus must have dramatically improved grain production. This would have led to a larger surplus and an increase in population.

At the same time, trading links with distant communities must have been established by the richer section of society seeking to possess rare goods. The larger surpluses would also permit the elaboration of non-farming specialization in metal­lurgy, pottery and priesthood.

The existence of many agricultural groups and pastoral nomadic communi­ties in close contact with each other must have led to conflict among them.

It appears that among the various competing communities in the Indus region, one set of people established their power over the others. This signaled the beginning of the ‘Mature Harappan’ phase, a phase that was to dominate the north-west for the next 700 to 800 years.

However, the transition from the Early Harappan phase to Mature Harappan phase has also suffered discontinuity. At Amri, Kot Diji, Gumla and Kalibangan, where Early Harappan material is strati­fied below the Mature Harappan, there is an overlap of earlier (local) and Harappan ceramics with or without signs of violence/destruction or desertion preceding the Mature Harappan.

This means that none of the earlier cultures was transformed into the Mature Harappan. The sequence on the Hakra plains also exhibits discontinuities. Of the 37 earlier sites in the region, only three continued to be inhabited in the Mature Harappan period.

Many Kot Dijian sites such as Rahman Dheri show no Mature Harappan occupation. Neither did most villages of northern and central Baluchistan.

Communications down the Bolan route to Kandahar also appear to cease, with no perceivable links between Mundigak and Harappan sites. Thus the world routes to the Indus plains from regions west and north-west changed radically between the Early and Mature Harappan periods.

The Indus civilisation is called the Harappan Civilisation after a convention in archaeology that when an ancient culture is described, it is named after the modern name of the site which first revealed the existence of this culture.

However, since the term gives the erroneous impression that the civilisation began in Harappa, not everyone has accepted it.

The discovery of sites away from the river valley prompted archaeologists to use the term ‘Indus Civilisation’, since the other areas were also in the parallel systems of the river.