Harappa

Harappa, village in eastern Punjab province, eastern Pakistan. It lies on the left bank of a now dry course of the Ravi River, west-southwest of the city of Sahiwal, about 100 miles (160 km) southwest of Lahore.

The village stands on an extensive series of mounds in which excavations since 1921 have disclosed the remains of a large city of the Indus civilization, in size second only to Mohenjo-daro, which lies about 400 miles (644 km) to the southwest. The English archaeologist Sir John Hubert Marshall initiated and directed the original excavations at the site beginning in 1921. His findings pushed back knowledge of Indian prehistory to about 2500 bce.

Harappa: seals and tablets

The excavations revealed that Harappa was similar in plan to Mohenjo-daro, with a citadel resting on a raised area on the western flank of the town and a grid-plan layout of workers’ quarters on the eastern flank. The citadel was fortified by a tall mud-brick rampart that had rectangular salients, or bastions, placed at frequent intervals. Between the citadel and the Ravi River there existed barracklike blocks of workers’ quarters, along with a series of circular brick floors that were used for pounding grain and two rows of ventilated granary buildings, 12 in all, arranged around a podium. The total floor space of the granaries was more than 9,000 square feet (836 square metres), approximating closely that of the Mohenjo-daro granary in its original form. The entire layout, dominated by the citadel as it was, suggests the close administrative control of the food supplies within convenient proximity to the river-highway of the Ravi. However, no intelligible remains survive of the buildings of the citadel or of the main body of the town itself.