Rakhigarhi: The Largest Indus Valley Site and Its Ancient DNA

Rakhigarhi is an archaeological site in Haryana, India, and one of the largest settlements of the Indus Valley Civilisation, flourishing mainly between about 2600 and 1900 BC. Its scattered mounds, workshops and cemetery have made it a key site for the eastern part of the Indus world. In 2019 it became famous for the first published ancient genome from an Indus person.

Setting and size

Rakhigarhi lies on the plain of the Ghaggar river system, near the seasonal Chautang channel, about 150 kilometres north-west of Delhi. Its ruins form a cluster of mounds around two modern villages, Rakhi Khas and Rakhi Shahpur. Archaeologists label the main mounds RGR-1 to RGR-7, and some surveys count more.

How large the ancient city was is debated. Excavators working in the 2010s estimated an area of up to about 350 hectares, which would make it larger than Mohenjo-daro. Other archaeologists give figures of around 80 to 100 hectares, because not all mounds may have been occupied at the same time. Either way, it ranks among the biggest Indus sites.

Excavations and finds

The site was first recorded in the 1960s. The Archaeological Survey of India carried out excavations under Amarendra Nath from 1997 to 2000, and a team from Deccan College, Pune, led by Vasant Shinde, worked there in the 2010s. The Survey returned in the 2020s.

The excavations show occupation from an Early Harappan phase into the mature urban period. Some early levels have been dated to the 4th millennium BC or earlier, though the earliest dates are debated. The mature town had mud-brick and fired-brick houses, streets, drains and walled areas.

Finds include stamp seals with the Indus script, terracotta figurines, copper objects, standard weights and large numbers of beads. Evidence of bead-making and other crafts suggests Rakhigarhi was an important production centre. Raw materials such as carnelian, agate and marine shell had to be brought from Gujarat and the coast hundreds of kilometres away, showing that the city was connected to the trade networks that linked the Indus heartland with its eastern frontier. Nearby sites such as Kalibangan belonged to the same regional world along the Ghaggar. In 2020 the Indian government named it one of five “iconic” archaeological sites to be developed with museums and visitor facilities.

The cemetery

Mound RGR-7 is a cemetery of the mature Harappan period. Most bodies were laid on their backs with the head to the north, in rectangular pits, sometimes lined with mud bricks. Pottery vessels were placed near the head, and some burials contained ornaments such as shell bangles and beads.

The cemetery has allowed researchers to study the health and physical features of Harappan people. Some burials were displayed in the National Museum in New Delhi, giving visitors a rare view of Indus funerary practice.

The 2019 ancient genome

In September 2019 an international team led by researchers including Vasant Shinde, Vagheesh Narasimhan and David Reich published the genome of a woman buried in the Rakhigarhi cemetery. The heat and humidity of South Asia destroy DNA, and of the many skeletons sampled, only one, a petrous bone from the inner ear, gave usable results.

The study found that her ancestry came from two sources: an ancient lineage related to people of the Iranian plateau, and a lineage related to the earliest hunter-gatherers of South Asia. Importantly, the Iran-related part split from the ancestors of Iranian farmers before the rise of farming there, more than 10,000 years ago. The researchers argued that farming in South Asia may therefore have developed largely through local innovation or the spread of ideas, rather than through a large migration of farmers from Iran.

She had no detectable ancestry from the steppe pastoralists of Central Asia, which is common in many South Asians today. This matches the view that steppe-related ancestry reached South Asia later, during the 2nd millennium BC, a subject discussed in the article on Indo-Aryan migrations. A companion study in Science found similar ancestry in a few individuals buried at sites in Iran and Turkmenistan, such as Shahr-i Sokhta, who were probably migrants from the Indus region.

The findings rest on one genome, and the authors stressed the need for more samples. They also drew public debate in India, where questions of ancestry and language history are politically sensitive.

Timeline

• 4th millennium BC (debated): Early settlement on the site.
• c. 2600–1900 BC: Mature Harappan city flourishes.
• c. 1900 BC onwards: The city declines with the wider Indus urban system.
• 1960s: The site is recorded by archaeologists.
• 1997–2000: Excavations by the Archaeological Survey of India.
• 2010s: Deccan College excavations, including the cemetery.
• 2019, September: Publication of the first Harappan genome.
• 2020: Named one of India’s five “iconic” archaeological sites.

Why it matters

Rakhigarhi shows that some of the largest centres of the Indus Valley Civilisation lay far east of the Indus itself. Its cemetery produced the first direct genetic evidence about the people of the civilisation, changing debates on the origins of farming and populations in South Asia.