Excavations

The great Ancient Indus city of Dholavira features some of the best preserved stone architecture from the ancient Indus period. Traveller Jitaditya Narzary recounts in detail his visit to the site and gives an inside look at this beautiful site and the history it reveals. >

The film Mohenjo Daro opens in the remote village of Amri, where Sarman (Hrithik Roshan) and his friends wrestle a large crocodile in a riverine gorge. Amri is shown as a remote farming village from where the villagers travel to Mohenjodaro as it offers a bigger market for their wares. In this post we shine a light on the archaeological evidence from the ancient site of Amri, which lies on the western bank of the Indus, about 160 km south of Mohenjodaro. The archaeological importance of Amri was demonstrated in 1929 by the excavations of N.G.Majumdar, who discovered there, for the first t… >

The least excavated of the five large known ancient Indus cities – Mohenjo-daro and Dholavira, Harappa and Rakigarhi – is Ganweriwala, discovered in the late 1980s by Rafique Mughal. Deep in the desert, far from towns and close to the Indian border, it is hardly written about. >

We start 2016 and inaugurate the new Harappa.com by publishing long-lost images from Sir Mortimer Wheeler's personal collection. They are of the excavations he led at Mohenjo-daro in 1950. >

Sir Mortimer Wheeler, the excavator of the wall shown here, wrote that ". . . . both Harappa and Mohenjo-daro were dominated by am embattled acropolis or citadel, occupying a marginal block and built up with mud and mud-brick to a height of forty or fifty feet above the featureless lain with a revetment of backed brick. Upon this acropolis were ritual buildings and places of assembly. . .. From its acropolis one may suppose that each city was regarded by rulers who may on general probability had had priestly attributes but, as their well ordered towns and evolved dwellings imply, were essenti… >

"This terracotta vessel with a pronounced knob at the centre has engaged the attention of archaeologists as a "unique find" and was probably used in rituals or ceremonies. Similar vessels have been depicted on Harappan seals and copper plates" according to the ASI description of this object found at Bijnor (MSR 4) in 2017. >

"The main purpose of undertaking excavation at Lothal was to decide whether it could be considered as a true Harappan settlement where the people observed the same urban discipline and enjoyed the same material prosperity as in the metropolitan centres of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro." >

If we may fantasize about where ancient Indus archaeology could go online, one need not look farther than the City of Ur project. >

A Wide World Photo news agency photograph with the title given above was dated June 4, 1959. The caption, reflecting then popular conceptions like "invaders," was printed on the back: "For three thousand years a great and peaceful civilization has lain buried and forgotten on the banks of the Indus in what is today Pakistan. Now archaeologists are slowly excavating its capital, the ancient city of Moenjo Daro, a few miles south of Dokri. The city of Moenjo Daro is remarkable in many ways but most of all in its complete absence of fortifications. The assumption has been that the civilisat… >

A workman handing over the Priest King at the time of excavations in I, Block 2 of DK-B Area during the John Marshal led 1925-26 excavations at Mohenjo-daro. Possehl writes "many classic Harappan style artifacts came to light at this time, including the so-called Priest King which emerged from Dikshit's excavations in DK-B Area, in a building that the excavators thought may have been a hammam or hot bath." >