Decline

Articles on the decline and fall of what we know as the ancient Harappan or Indus Valley Civilization and the factors that might have led to its disappearance as a political or cultural entity after about 1900 BCE.

Counter-intuitive influence of Himalayan river morphodynamics on Indus Civilisation urban settlements

This is a really important article in that it shows how modern scientific tools and techniques can be used to cast surprising light on the assumptions and conclusions [myths?] that are often drawn from the limited set of evidence archaeologists have to work with.

Landscapes of Urbanization and De-Urbanization: A Large-Scale Approach to Investigating the Indus Civilization’s Settlement Distributions in Northwest India

A complex meta-analysis of data in a corner of northwestern India for what it can tell us about settlement patterns during the ancient Indus period and just after, when a host of factors, including possibly climate change, seem to have contributed to a re-allocation of populations between types of settlements.

Perspectives from the Indus: Contexts of interaction in the Late Harappan/Post-Urban period

Rita P. Wright, an archaeologist with long experience understanding the Indus areas around Harappa (see the Beas Settlement and Land Survey) looks at the complex evidence surrounding the decline of Indus civilization at the end of the third and beginning of the second millennium (around 2000 BCE and afterwards).

Royal "Chariot" Burials of Sanauli near Delhi and Archaeological Correlates of Prehistoric Indo-Iranian Languages

Another important and recent (October 2020) paper by Asko Parpola. He examines the 2018 finds from the Late Harappan site of Sanauli near Delhi in light of his research on early Indo-Aryan languages in the subcontinent and their origin in Central Asia.

Recurring summer and winter droughts from 4.2-3.97 thousand years ago in north India

This highly technical and scientific paper brings together all the recent evidence from Dharamjali Cave in the Himalayas over a 230 year period around 2000 BCE, when the ancient Indus civilization was in decline, to show "that repeated intensely dry periods spanned multiple generations. The record highlights the deficits in winter and summer rainfall during the urban phase of the Indus Civilization, which prompted adaptation through flexible, self- reliant, and drought-resistant agricultural strategies."