Picture a lane in Mohenjo-daro around 2300 BCE, a narrow, mudbrick-lined passages that still trace the lower town today, just as remarkable in their orderliness as the city's famous covered drains. Someone sets down a handful of small objects.
The booklet Kot Diji published by the Department of Archaeology details the excavations carried out at the site of Kot Diji, located in the Khairpur district of Sindh about 40 km from Mohenjo-daro.
While visiting Mohenjo-daro in early 2025, I asked one of the best guides to this vast ancient city, Sheikh Javed Ali Sindhi, whether there was a booklet or guide available.
The recent evidence from Mohenjo-daro of a "Kot Dijian" layer beneath its Indus ruins, including the city wall, dating from 2600 BCE or earlier, brings renewed interest to this precursor culture to the Indus civilization.
The early use and gradual development of wheeled vehicles at the site of Harappa, Pakistan to better understand the role of carts in the process of urban development.
This is a deeply researched and satisfying book, one that takes on the insightful point made by Marshall: "Great cities with teeming populations like Mohenjo-daro and Harappa could never have come into being save in a country which was capable of producing food on a big scale."
