Skip to main content
Home

Main navigation

  • home
  • slides
  • essays
  • articles
  • books
  • video
  • q & a
  • blog
Secondary menu
  • about us
    • scholars
    • privacy
    • support
    • image rights
    • credits
    • contact us
  • resources
  • ◀
  • 129 of 186
  • ▶
First Excavations at Harappa
1924-25: A Lost City Emerges

Large Collection of Animal Bones

Published in ARASI 1924-25, Plate XXVI (a). Title: ‘Harappa: Mound B, A large collection of animals’ bones’.

From “large trench excavated in mound B … behind the Naugaza tomb”, stratum below stratum III, and the collection numbered B. 954 [ARASI 1924-25, p. 78]

Sahni: “Human bones were scattered all over the trench being described but one large collection of animal bones (B. 954) deserves special mention (Plate XXVI, a). I had these bones examined by a Professor of the Veterinary College at Lahore and they are stated to include besides many, which on account of their fragmentary condition are not identifiable, a skull with a few molars of a dog; the upper jaw of a sheep; the lower jaw with two or three molars and hocks (Tibia Tarsals) of an ox; and a large number of bones of a horse or horses, viz., the radius and ulna combined, scapula, humerus, occipital, etc. How these bones came to be buried here remains inexplicable. They might be the remnants of a big animal sacrifice.”

- Daya Ram Sahni, ARASI 1924-25, p. 79.

In Vats 1940, Vol. II, Plate XXX (c): ‘Heap of Animal Bones of Stratum IV found in the Centre of the Trench’

Trench B, in Mound AB

Vats: “In association with this stratum, and in the central part of the excavation, bones (B954), which deserves special mention (Pl. XXX, c). Writing about them in the A.S.R. for 1924-25 (p. 79) he says ‘I had them examined by a professor … big animal sacrifice’. Several smaller collections of animal bones, almost entirely of cattle, which I found at very low levels in Mound F (fn. See p. 232 infra), Area J, and in the Deep Digging in the Cemetery H were not piled up as these, but lay scattered about, so that only a few bones were ever heaped up together.”

- Vats, M.S. 1940, Vol. I, p. 142.

Slide Year
1924-25: A Lost City Emerges
ASI Number
461/86
Punjab Volume
31
Silver Plate
3461
Animals
Harappa
Photograph
Daya Ram Sahni
© Harappa.com 1995-2026 31