Rakhigarhi dig throws up complex city, drainage, jewellery

New findings at the pre-Harappan era site at Haryana’s Rakhigarhi has indicated the presence of industrial society, replete with a planned city with a complex street system on raised platforms, and houses with extensive layouts, and a drainage system, the Archaeological Survey of India has said. Ahead of the closure of this year’s season of excavations, officials said, DNA samples of two new skeletons at the site’s previously discovered necropolis have also been sent which could throw up new findings about the food and cultural habits of the era.

Dating to 5000 BCE, the site has several periods of pre-Harappan and early Harappan settlements, and has been excavated earlier. The present spate of excavations, led by Sanjay Manjul of the ASI, points to complex town-planning, with lanes and drainage systems, as well as multiple layers of civilisation. Below the burial sites, there is evidence of settlement of earlier Harappan periods.

“This indicates that after the early Harappan settlements, these sites were used by Harappans as burial grounds,” Majul told DH. Multiple DNA samples are now being investigated to find the time periods of each of these layers.

The site, considered the biggest Harappan-era site, was one of the five iconic sites that finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced in her 2020 Budget Speech, along with UP’s Hastinapur, Assam’s Sivasagar, Gujarat’s Dholavira and Tamil Nadu’s Adichanallur. The culture ministry has earlier pledged to make a museum at the site.

Among the findings, is a wall of 18-metres-long wall, as well as evidence of a jewellery-making unit. As many as 40 archaeologists, working on three of the 11 mounds in the site spread across 350 hectares, have found a large quantity of waste of semi-precious stones like agate and carnelian suggesting the manufacture of beads as part of an extensive lapidary, ASI said.

During this season’s dig, mounds 1, 3 and 7 were taken up, and in total 13 trenches were excavated. Lanes made of repurposed terracotta, with a general width of 2.6 metre, were found on raised platforms, between two mud-brick structures. “These lanes were found intersecting at ninety degrees at 18 m in east-west and north-south orientation. At present 15 courses of mud bricks are visible. An index trench has been prepared to comprehend the stratigraphy of the site,” the ASI said in a release.

Hearths, kilns, steatite seals, terracotta unbaked sealing with relief of elephants and Harappan script, animal figurines of dog, bull, etc. made of terracotta and steatite, a large number of steatite beads, beads of semi-precious stones, and copper objects are part of the elaborate list of antiquities recovered from the excavations, the ASI said.

A necropolis was earlier found at the site on mound 7 with over 60 burials. This time, the ASI found two female skeletons buried with pottery and adorned jewellery, like jasper and agate beads and shell bangles. In one of the burials, a symbolic miniature copper mirror was also buried with the skeleton.

The findings are in line with other Harappan-era sites like Mohenjodaro, Dholavira, Binjore, etc, Manjul said, with evidence of a strong civic sense. “Good engineering, plot planning, lanes in right angles, and a water drainage system are some other hallmarks of this site, similar to what we have found in other Harappan sites. The raised platforms indicate industrial development,” he said.

The site at Rakhigarhi has been excavated previously on several occasions. This includes a trial digging at mound number 6 of the site by reputed archaeologist Ravindra Singh Bisht, and a full-scale excavation led by Dr Amarendra Nath of the Institute of Archaeology. The third was carried out by Professor Vasant Shinde of Pune’s Deccan College.