Harappa: The Indus City That Gave a Civilisation Its Name

Harappa is an archaeological site in Punjab, Pakistan, where one of the largest cities of the Indus Valley Civilisation flourished between about 2600 and 1900 BC. It was the first Indus city to be excavated, in the early 1920s, and so gave its name to the whole Harappan civilisation. Despite heavy damage in the 19th century, its long sequence of occupation makes it a key site for understanding how South Asia’s first cities rose and declined.

Setting and size

Harappa lies on the plains of the Punjab, about 24 kilometres west of the modern city of Sahiwal. In ancient times the Ravi River, a tributary of the Indus, ran close to the city; it has since shifted its course to the north. The river gave access to farmland, water and trade routes linking the uplands of the north and west with the lower Indus.

The ruins form a group of mounds rising above the plain. Archaeologists label them with letters: Mound AB, sometimes called the citadel, Mound E and the area known as ET to the south-east, and Mound F to the north. At its height the city covered more than 150 hectares. Estimates of its population vary widely, from about 20,000 to more than 40,000 people.

A long sequence of occupation

Recent excavations have shown that Harappa grew over many centuries rather than being founded as a planned city. The Harappa Archaeological Research Project, active since 1986, divides its history into several periods:

• Ravi phase: a farming village from before about 3300 BC, possibly as early as about 3700 BC, with pottery, beads and simple houses.
• Kot Diji phase (c. 2800–2600 BC): a larger town with mud-brick walls and growing craft production.
• Harappan phase (c. 2600–1900 BC): the mature city, with massive walls and gateways, planned streets, drains and workshops.
• Late Harappan phase (from c. 1900 BC): a smaller settlement associated with the Cemetery H culture, which lasted into the later 2nd millennium BC.

Pottery from the Ravi phase bears scratched marks that some researchers see as early forerunners of the Indus script, perhaps several centuries older than the fully developed writing of the mature period.

Walls, streets and workshops

The mature city was divided into walled sectors, each entered through gateways. Massive mud-brick walls with fired-brick facing surrounded Mound AB and Mound E. Gateways may have served as checkpoints where goods entering the city were inspected and taxed, though this is an interpretation.

Inside, streets and lanes were lined with houses built of fired brick. Many homes had bathing areas and drains connected to larger street drains, as at Mohenjo-daro. Wells supplied fresh water.

Harappa was a major manufacturing centre. Excavators have found workshops for making beads of carnelian and other stones, shell bangles, faience ornaments, copper objects and stoneware bangles fired at high temperatures. Weights, seals and inscribed tablets point to organised trade and record-keeping.

Raw materials came from far afield. Carnelian and agate were brought from Gujarat, marine shell from the Arabian Sea coast, copper probably from Balochistan or Rajasthan, and lapis lazuli from north-eastern Afghanistan. Finished goods travelled outwards along rivers and overland routes, some eventually reaching the Persian Gulf and Mesopotamia.

Harappa has also produced thousands of small inscribed tablets of clay and faience, many of them made in moulds with identical inscriptions. Their purpose is unknown; suggestions include tokens, receipts or amulets. Among the finest objects from the site is a small red stone male torso, carved with naturalistic modelling, now in the National Museum in New Delhi. Its date has been debated: some scholars accept it as Harappan, while others have suggested it is later.

The Granary or Great Hall

On Mound F stands one of Harappa’s best-known buildings: a massive brick foundation with two rows of six rectangular units separated by a central passage. In the 1920s and 1940s its excavators, Madho Sarup Vats and Mortimer Wheeler, interpreted it as a state granary, comparing it with the granaries of ancient Rome.

No grain or storage evidence was found inside, however, and many archaeologists now call it the Great Hall. It may have been a warehouse, a public assembly building or something else. Nearby, rows of circular brick platforms were once thought to be places where workers pounded grain, an idea that also lacks firm proof. Wheeler also identified small, regularly arranged houses nearby as workers’ quarters, which fitted his picture of a tightly controlled state economy. Modern excavators are more cautious, noting that such labels say more about the assumptions of the 1940s than about how the buildings were actually used.

Cemeteries

Harappa is one of the few Indus cities with well-studied cemeteries. Cemetery R37, belonging to the mature Harappan period, contained around 200 burials. The dead were usually laid on their backs in rectangular pits, with pottery vessels and sometimes personal ornaments such as shell bangles and beads. Grave goods were modest, and there are no rich royal tombs.

Studies of the skeletons have given rare insights into Harappan life. Analyses of teeth and bones suggest that some people buried in Cemetery R37 had grown up elsewhere and moved to the city, and that diseases and injuries were common. The variety of ornaments in the graves also suggests differences in status, though not on the scale seen in contemporary Mesopotamia.

A later burial ground, Cemetery H, gave its name to the Late Harappan culture of the Punjab. Its distinctive red pottery, painted with motifs such as peacocks, stars and plants, differs from mature Harappan wares. Its upper levels contain bones placed in large pots, a change in burial customs that hints at new beliefs after the decline of the city.

Decline and later history

From around 1900 BC Harappa changed in ways seen across the Indus world. The city became smaller and less carefully maintained, the standard weights and inscribed seals of the mature period went out of use, and new styles of pottery appeared. Houses were built over earlier streets and drains were no longer kept clear.

The causes were probably several. A weaker monsoon and shifting rivers would have reduced harvests, and the decline of long-distance trade with the Persian Gulf and Mesopotamia removed one source of wealth for the city’s merchants. There is no evidence that Harappa was destroyed by invaders. People continued to live on parts of the mounds, and much later, in historical times, small settlements were built on the site again.

The Late Harappan people of the Punjab kept many older crafts, such as bead-making and farming practices, alive. Archaeologists therefore see the end of urban Harappa not as the disappearance of a population but as a reorganisation of society into smaller, more local communities.

Damage and discovery

Harappa suffered badly before archaeologists arrived. Local villagers had long taken bricks from the mounds for houses. In the 1850s, during the construction of the railway between Lahore and Multan, contractors removed large quantities of ancient fired bricks for use as track ballast. Much of the upper city, especially on Mound AB, was lost.

The British traveller Charles Masson described the ruins after visiting them in 1826, and Alexander Cunningham, later the first Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India, visited several times from 1853 onwards. In 1875 he published an inscribed stamp seal from Harappa, the first Indus seal to be illustrated, though he did not realise it belonged to an unknown Bronze Age civilisation.

Excavation began in 1920–21 under Daya Ram Sahni. Madho Sarup Vats continued the work between 1926 and 1934, publishing his results in 1940. Mortimer Wheeler excavated the defences in 1946. Since 1986 the Harappa Archaeological Research Project, founded by George Dales and later led by Jonathan Mark Kenoyer and Richard Meadow with Pakistani colleagues, has produced a detailed, well-dated sequence for the site.

Key people

• Charles Masson (1800–1853): British traveller whose published account of his 1826 visit is the earliest description of the ruins.
• Alexander Cunningham (1814–1893): visited the site, noted the brick-robbing and published the first Indus seal.
• Daya Ram Sahni (1879–1939): Indian archaeologist who led the first excavations.
• Madho Sarup Vats (1896–1955): directed the major excavations of 1926–34.
• Mortimer Wheeler (1890–1976): dug the city walls and popularised the interpretation of the citadel and granary.
• Jonathan Mark Kenoyer: American archaeologist who has co-directed research at Harappa since the 1980s.

Timeline

• c. 3700–3300 BC: Ravi phase settlement begins on the site.
• c. 2800–2600 BC: Kot Diji phase town with mud-brick walls.
• c. 2600–1900 BC: Mature Harappan city at its height.
• c. 1900–1300 BC: Late Harappan and Cemetery H phase; the city shrinks.
• 1826: Charles Masson visits the ruins.
• 1850s: Railway contractors remove large quantities of ancient bricks.
• 1875: Alexander Cunningham publishes the first known Indus seal.
• 1920–21: Daya Ram Sahni begins excavations.
• 1926–34: Excavations under Madho Sarup Vats.
• 1986: The Harappa Archaeological Research Project begins.

Why it matters

Harappa revealed the existence of the Indus Valley Civilisation and still supplies some of the best evidence for its whole life cycle, from farming village to city and back to smaller settlement. Its workshops, cemeteries and long stratigraphy help archaeologists date and compare sites across South Asia. Its story is also a reminder of how easily ancient sites can be lost to modern construction.