DIGGING DEEP

What excavations in Rakhigarhi reveal about its links to the Indus Valley Civilisation Excavations at Rakhigarhi have revealed a well-planned city with 1.92-m-wide roads. There are pits, believed to be sacrificial pits or for religious ceremonies, brick-lined drains and other antiquities such as terracotta and bronze artefacts, semi-precious stones and bits of jewellery, weights, seals and other items which link it to the Indus Valley Civilisation.

Evidence of settlement in Rakhigarhi has been found during the early and mature Harappan phase – 3200-1800 BCE, but not during the late Harappan phase, probably due to the drying of the river on the banks of which it had flourished.

Burial sites with skeletons have also been found. The graves included items of daily use.

A study of the DNA remains in skeletons found at Rakhigarhi between 2013-2016 by archaeologist Vasant Shinde aims to understand the ancestry of people of the subcontinent. The results of the study, done in collaboration with foreign experts, are expected to be published in a month. Shinde says their study shows a mixing of population between people here and from Iran, Afghanistan and south India, because of trade. Shinde calls Rakhigarhi a singleculture site because after the Harappans, no evidence of any other settlement has been found here till the modern village was founded. But some scholars believe there is evidence of a pre-Harappan settlement here.