Class 12 History Chapter 1 Bricks, Beads and Bones NCERT Solutions in English

Q. List the items of food available to people in Harappan cities. Identify the groups who would have provided these.

Answer: People in Harappan cities had access to a wide range of plant and animal food. Wheat, barley, lentil, chickpea and sesame were the main grains and pulses; millets are found from sites in Gujarat, while finds of rice are relatively rare. Animal bones found at Harappan sites include cattle, sheep, goat, buffalo and pig, all of which were domesticated, so meat and dairy products from these animals were likely eaten. Bones of wild species such as boar, deer and gharial, along with fish and fowl, are also found, showing that hunted and fished food was consumed as well.

These items would have come mainly from three groups. First, farmers, who grew grain and pulses and kept livestock, sending their surplus to the cities. Second, herders, who tended domesticated animals for meat and milk. Third, possibly hunting and fishing communities, who supplied wild meat, fish and fowl, though it is not certain whether the Harappans hunted these animals themselves or obtained the meat from other communities.

Q. How do archaeologists trace socio-economic differences in Harappan society? What are the differences that they notice?

Answer: Since the Harappan script remains undeciphered, no written record tells us directly about rich and poor. Archaeologists instead rely on two indirect strategies. The first is studying burials: the dead were generally laid in pits, sometimes lined with bricks, and some graves contain pottery and ornaments, perhaps reflecting a belief in an afterlife. Jewellery has been found in the burials of both men and women, such as the ornament of three shell rings, a jasper bead and hundreds of micro beads found near the skull of a male skeleton at the Harappa cemetery. On the whole, however, the Harappans do not appear to have buried precious things with the dead, unlike contemporary Egypt, where royal pyramids were filled with wealth.

The second strategy is classifying artefacts as utilitarian (objects of daily use made from ordinary materials, such as querns, pottery and needles) or luxuries (rare objects made from costly, non-local materials or complex techniques, such as faience pots and gold jewellery). This division is not always clear-cut, but the pattern of distribution is: rare and valuable objects are concentrated in large settlements such as Mohenjodaro and Harappa, while miniature faience pots, for instance, are absent from smaller settlements such as Kalibangan, and all Harappan gold jewellery found so far comes from hoards rather than everyday contexts.

Q. Would you agree that the drainage system in Harappan cities indicates town planning? Give reasons for your answer.

Answer: Yes, this is fully supportable. The very sequence of construction at Mohenjodaro shows this: platforms were built first, fixing where construction would take place; then grid roads together with drains were laid out, intersecting at right angles; and only then were houses built along these roads, with every house required to have at least one wall along a street so its waste water could reach the street drain. This order shows that planning came before construction, not after.

Inside the house, waste water first flowed into a sump or cesspit, so that solid matter settled there while only waste water flowed on into the street drain. Main channels were built of bricks set in mortar and covered with loose bricks that could be removed for cleaning; in some cases limestone was used for the covers. This was not a facility limited to large cities alone: at Lothal, houses were of mud brick, yet the drains were of burnt brick, showing this was a standard applied across the region rather than a one-off feature of any single settlement. Such a carefully planned, uniformly applied drainage network could not have existed without prior planning, so it is certainly evidence of town planning.

Q. List the materials used to make beads in the Harappan civilisation. Describe the process by which any one kind of bead was made.

Answer: Beads were made from stones such as carnelian (a beautiful red colour), jasper, crystal, quartz and steatite; from metals such as copper, bronze and gold; and from shell, faience and terracotta. Some beads combined two or more stones cemented together, and some had gold caps. Shapes included disc-shaped, cylindrical, spherical, barrel-shaped and segmented forms, some decorated by incising, painting or etched designs.

Making a carnelian bead involved three stages. First, chipping: nodules of the yellowish raw stone were chipped into rough shapes. Second, flaking: these rough shapes were finely flaked into their final form. Third, finishing: grinding, polishing and drilling completed the bead. Archaeologists’ experiments have shown that the distinctive red colour of carnelian was obtained by firing the yellowish raw material and the beads at various stages of production. Specialised drills used for this work have been found at Chanhudaro, Lothal and, more recently, Dholavira, and finished beads from these smaller centres were likely carried to large cities such as Mohenjodaro and Harappa.

Q. Look at Fig. 1.30 and describe what you see. How is the body placed? What are the objects placed near it? Are there any artefacts on the body? Do these indicate the sex of the skeleton?

Answer: Fig. 1.30 shows a Harappan burial. The skeleton lies stretched out at full length on its back in a long rectangular pit. At Harappan sites the dead were generally laid in pits like this; in some instances the hollowed-out space was lined with bricks, though it is not certain whether this variation reflects any social difference.

Near the head, at one end of the pit, a group of pots has been placed: jars, bowls and dishes-on-stands. The book notes that some graves contain pottery and ornaments, perhaps indicating a belief that these could be used in the afterlife. No ornaments can be clearly made out on the body in the photograph; in other burials, jewellery (such as shell rings and beads) or a copper mirror has been found with the dead. The presence or nature of such artefacts (ordinary or precious) is one of the clues archaeologists use to look for social differences among the dead, though nothing can be said with certainty from this alone.

The sex of a skeleton is determined mainly through scientific study of the bones themselves (the shape of the pelvis, the skull), not from the objects buried with it: jewellery, for instance, has been found in the burials of both men and women, such as the shell rings and beads found near a male skeleton at the Harappa cemetery. So the objects placed with a burial cannot, by themselves, reliably indicate the sex of the skeleton.

Q. Describe some of the distinctive features of Mohenjodaro.

Answer: Mohenjodaro is far better preserved than Harappa, which was badly destroyed by brick robbers: as early as 1875, Cunningham noted that enough brick had been carried away from Harappa to lay about 100 miles of the Lahore-Multan railway line. Mohenjodaro is divided into two parts: the western Citadel, smaller but higher, built on mud-brick platforms and walled off from the rest of the city; and the eastern Lower Town, larger but lower, also walled, and laid out on a grid.

Its construction shows clear planning: platforms first, then grid roads with drains, then houses. Bricks, whether sun-dried or baked, followed a fixed 4:2:1 ratio of length, breadth and height everywhere in the settlement. It has been calculated that building the platforms alone would have required about four million person-days of labour. The drainage system carried house waste water through a sump into street drains; the Lower Town’s houses were typically centred on a courtyard, had no windows facing the street at ground level (suggesting a concern for privacy), had brick-paved bathrooms, and sometimes staircases leading to an upper storey or roof. Scholars estimate Mohenjodaro had about 700 wells in total. On the Citadel stood public structures: a warehouse, of which only the lower brick portions survive, and the Great Bath, a rectangular tank made watertight with bricks set on edge and gypsum mortar, with a nearby building containing eight bathrooms, that some scholars connect with a special ritual use, though this cannot be proven. This Citadel-Lower Town pattern, however, is not universal: Dholavira and Lothal show different arrangements.

Q. List the raw materials required for craft production in the Harappan civilisation and discuss how these might have been obtained.

Answer: Harappan craftspeople needed stones such as carnelian, jasper, crystal, quartz and steatite for bead-making; metals such as copper, bronze and gold; whole shells for bangles and inlay work; steatite for seals; and chert for weights. Clay was locally available on the alluvial plain, but stone, timber and metal were not, since the Harappans lived on this plain.

These materials were obtained in two main ways. The first was settling at the source itself: Nageshwar and Balakot (both coastal, for shell), Shortughai in far-off Afghanistan (near the best source of lapis lazuli), and Lothal (near Bharuch’s carnelian, the steatite of south Rajasthan and north Gujarat, and Rajasthan’s metal). The second was sending expeditions, such as to Khetri in Rajasthan for copper and south India for gold; these expeditions established contact with local communities, such as the Ganeshwar-Jodhpura culture of Khetri, which had non-Harappan pottery but an unusual wealth of copper objects, and probably supplied copper to the Harappans. Copper may also have come from Oman by sea, since both Omani and Harappan copper contain traces of nickel. Goods were transported by bullock cart as well as along riverine and coastal routes. Craft centres themselves are identified from the waste material, cut shell or stone fragments, left behind at the place of production, which is a more reliable indicator than finished objects, since those were often carried elsewhere.

Q. Discuss how archaeologists reconstruct the past.

Answer: Archaeologists reconstruct the past from excavated objects, the layers (stratigraphy) they were found in, and their context. They study a mound’s layers carefully, since the lowest layers are generally the oldest, allowing finds in a given layer to be assigned to a cultural period. R.E.M. Wheeler standardised this stratigraphic method; before him, John Marshall had excavated in uniform horizontal units across the mound, ignoring its actual layers, which permanently lost the context of many finds.

This process faces three major problems. First, most materials perish: cloth, leather, wood and reeds decompose, especially in a tropical climate, so only stone, burnt clay and metal usually survive, leaving whole categories of Harappan life invisible to us. Second, finds are accidental, not typical: people threw away only broken or useless objects and reused everything else, so an intact valuable object being found usually means it was lost or deliberately hidden, not that such objects were common. Third, function is only ever an inference: classifying an object by material is straightforward, but classifying it by function is not; archaeologists compare it to similar present-day objects and consider the context in which it was found (as Mackay did in comparing an ancient quern to a modern-day “curry stone”), but this is only ever an analogy, not proof.

Reconstructing religion is the hardest task of all: early archaeologists assumed any unusual object must be religious, labelling terracotta female figurines “mother goddesses” and a stone statue the “priest-king” on the basis of Mesopotamian parallels. The “proto-Shiva” seal shows exactly where this method can break down: the Rigveda’s Rudra is neither Pashupati nor a yogi, so the seated figure surrounded by animals does not actually match this description, and may instead be a shaman. Archaeologists therefore interpret evidence carefully, but many questions remain unanswered.

Q. Discuss the functions that may have been performed by rulers in Harappan society.

Answer: Archaeology gives no direct proof of a ruler: a large building at Mohenjodaro was labelled a “palace” but contained no spectacular finds, and a stone statue is called the “priest-king” only because archaeologists were familiar with Mesopotamian priest-kings and drew a parallel, not because of any direct Harappan evidence. Even so, the complex decisions clearly being made and carried out point to certain possible functions.

The most obvious function would be organising town planning and construction: mobilising labour on a large scale to make bricks and build platforms, walls and drains, which is not possible without some central authority. Second, maintaining standardisation: the extraordinary uniformity of pottery, seals, weights and bricks from Jammu to Gujarat suggests some form of control, especially since bricks obviously were not produced at a single centre. Third, managing trade and the supply of raw materials: sending expeditions to distant sources such as Khetri for copper, and maintaining trade contacts stretching to Mesopotamia, Oman and Bahrain, required organisation. Fourth, possibly performing ritual functions, although it is not known whether this was connected with political power.

It is equally possible, however, that the Harappans followed some kind of democratic system, since some of the structures, with their given features, were apparently created for utilitarian purposes. Scholars hold three views on this question: some believe there was no ruler at all and everybody had equal status; some believe there were several rulers, one for each city; and others argue for a single state, given the similarity of artefacts and the evidence of planned settlements.

Q. On Map 1, use a pencil to circle sites where evidence of agriculture has been recovered. Mark an X against sites where there is evidence of craft production and R against sites where raw materials were found.

Answer: The marked sites are listed below (○ = circle for agriculture, X = craft production, R = raw materials). The corrected map of these sites is Figure 1 in the notes for this chapter.

Shortughai (lapis lazuli) and Khetri (copper) are also raw-material areas named in the chapter, but they are not shown on Map 1. It also helps to be able to locate the five major cities: Rakhigarhi, Mohenjodaro, Harappa, Dholavira and Ganweriwala.

Q. Find out if there are any museums in your town. Visit one of them and write a report on any ten items, describing how old they are, where they were found, and why you think they are on display.

Approach: This is a field-work question without one fixed answer. For each of the ten items, cover three points: (1) its approximate period or date, from the museum’s own label; (2) its findspot, where it was excavated; and (3) your own reasoning for why it was chosen for display (for example, its rarity, the skill involved in making it, or its historical importance). If Harappan artefacts are on display, describe them using the terms learnt in this chapter (seal, weight, faience, and so on).

Q. Collect illustrations of ten things made of stone, metal and clay produced and used at present. Compare these with the pictures of the Harappan civilisation in this chapter, and discuss the similarities and differences that you find.

Approach: Choose ten present-day objects (for example, a grindstone, a clay pot, a copper vessel, a beaded ornament) and compare each with a similar illustration from the chapter. Example of a similarity: Mackay compared Mohenjodaro’s saddle quern to present-day grindstones and “curry stones”; you can repeat this exact method yourself. Example of a difference: present-day objects are often machine-made and standardised, while Harappan objects were hand-made through a staged process, as with beads (chipping, flaking, finishing). Also remember the limitation the chapter points out: a comparison with the present is only an analogy, not certain proof, and your report should mention this.

Q. Are there any similarities or differences in the distribution of settlements shown on Maps 1 and 2?

Answer: Similarities. As the chapter itself points out, the Mature Harappan culture developed in some of the areas occupied by the Early Harappan cultures. Both maps show settlements in the Indus valley and its borderlands: the Amri-Nal and Kot Diji clusters of Sind on Map 2 lie in the same region as Amri, Kot Diji, Mohenjodaro and Chanhudaro on Map 1, and the Siswal cluster in the east lies in the same region as Banawali, Kalibangan, Mitathal and Rakhigarhi.
Differences. (i) Early Harappan settlements on Map 2 are grouped in a few clusters (Damb Sadaat in the Baluchistan hills, Amri-Nal and Kot Diji in Sind, Siswal in the east), and the chapter says these settlements were generally small, with virtually no large buildings. (ii) Map 1 spreads much further: to the Gujarat coast (Dholavira, Lothal, Rangpur, Nageshwar), the Makran coast (Sutkagendor, Balakot) and north to Manda, and it includes the great cities such as Mohenjodaro, Harappa, Rakhigarhi, Dholavira and Ganweriwala. (iii) Map 1 marks only some important sites, while Map 2 shows the whole area of occupation, so the number of dots on the two maps cannot be compared directly.

Q. Do you think these tools could have been used for harvesting?

Answer: Fig. 1.4 shows two flat, broad copper blades and three long, thin rods. The flat blades have a cutting edge and, fixed to a wooden handle, could have been used to cut the stalks of a crop, so harvesting is possible for them. The thin rods look more like chisels or borers for craft work than harvesting tools. However, the chapter itself leaves the question open: archaeologists are still trying to find out whether the Harappans harvested with stone blades set in wooden handles or with metal tools. Copper also had to be brought from outside (for example from Khetri in Rajasthan or from Oman), so it is likely that cheaper stone blades were used as well.

Q. What is the evidence used by archaeologists to reconstruct dietary practices?

Answer: (i) Charred grains and seeds, studied by archaeo-botanists (specialists in ancient plant remains): wheat, barley, lentil, chickpea and sesame; millets from sites in Gujarat; rice relatively rare. (ii) Animal bones, studied by archaeo-zoologists or zooarchaeologists: cattle, sheep, goat, buffalo and pig, which were domesticated; bones of wild species such as boar, deer and gharial; and bones of fish and fowl. (iii) Equipment for processing food: grinding equipment such as saddle querns, and vessels of stone, metal and terracotta for mixing, blending and cooking (Source 1). (iv) Evidence of farming, such as terracotta models of the plough from Cholistan and Banawali, and the ploughed field at Kalibangan, which show how the food was produced.

Q. Archaeologists use present-day analogies to try and understand what ancient artefacts were used for. Mackay was comparing present-day querns with what he found. Is this a useful strategy?

Answer: Yes, it is useful, within limits. Why it helps: many objects of daily use have hardly changed, so comparing them with present-day objects gives a reasonable idea of their function. Mackay identified two types of saddle querns: one for grinding grain, and one used with a pounder for pounding herbs and spices. His workmen called the second type “curry stones”, and his cook even asked to borrow one for the kitchen, which supports his identification. The chapter says this method of moving from the known to the unknown is plausible for stone querns and pots. Its limits: (i) it becomes speculative when extended to “religious” symbols, as with the “proto-Shiva” seal or the cones that may be lingas or gamesmen; (ii) an object’s use may have changed over thousands of years; (iii) so the analogy must be checked against the context in which the object was found (a house, a drain, a grave, a kiln) and against other evidence.

Q. How is the Lower Town different from the Citadel?

Answer: (i) Size and height: the Citadel is smaller but higher; the Lower Town is much larger but lower. (ii) Position: in Fig. 1.7 the Citadel lies to the west and the Lower Town to the east. (iii) Why the Citadel is high: its buildings were constructed on mud brick platforms. (iv) Walls: the Citadel was walled, which physically separated it from the Lower Town; the Lower Town was also walled. (v) Buildings: the Citadel has structures probably used for special public purposes, such as the warehouse and the Great Bath; the Lower Town has residential buildings, laid out along streets in an approximate grid pattern, with houses built around courtyards. In the figure the Lower Town is divided into many excavated blocks (HR, VS, DK, Moneer areas) separated by streets.

Q. Where is the courtyard? Where are the two staircases? What is the entrance to the house like?

Answer: Courtyard: the large paved open space in the middle of the house, marked 18, with rooms on all sides. Staircases: both are on the western side of the house, one rising along the wall of room 16 in the north-west, and one beside room 15, next to room 17. They led to a second storey or the roof. Entrance: a narrow doorway in the outer wall (bottom left of the drawing) that leads in through a passage, so it does not give a direct view of the interior or the courtyard. Together with the lack of windows in the ground-level walls, this shows the concern for privacy that the chapter mentions.

Q. Which of the architectural features of Mohenjodaro indicate planning?

Answer: (i) The settlement was divided into a Citadel and a Lower Town, both walled. (ii) Buildings stood on platforms that were built first; once they were in place, all building activity was restricted to a fixed area on them, so the city was first planned and then built. Just the foundations needed about four million person-days of labour. (iii) Bricks, sun-dried or baked, were of a standardised ratio: length four times and breadth twice the height. (iv) Roads and streets were laid out in an approximate grid pattern, intersecting at right angles. (v) Streets with drains were laid out first and houses built along them, so every house had at least one wall along a street. (vi) Every house had its own brick-paved bathroom with drains connected through the wall to the street drains; main drains were covered with loose bricks that could be removed for cleaning, with sumps at intervals. (vii) Many houses had wells, about 700 in all. (viii) Public structures on the Citadel, such as the warehouse and the watertight Great Bath, were built to a careful design.

Q. Are there other structures on the Citadel apart from the warehouse and the Great Bath?

Answer: Yes. The plan of the Citadel (Fig. 1.10) also shows the Great Courtyard, a building marked “College”, the Stupa Area, Block 6, the Pillared Hall, buildings in the Southern Section and the L Area, the ACC Area, Jansen’s excavated well, stairs, Main Street and Divinity Street, and retaining walls including the Eastern Retaining Wall. The text adds that across a lane to the north of the Great Bath lay a smaller building with eight bathrooms, four on each side of a corridor.

Q. What are the modes of disposal of the dead prevalent at present? To what extent do these represent social differences?

Answer: Modes at present: cremation (most Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists), including in electric crematoria; burial (Muslims, Christians and some Hindu communities, and often infants); immersion in a river in some cases; and exposure in the Towers of Silence among Parsis. Social differences: the mode itself mostly reflects religion and community, not wealth. But differences of status and wealth do show in many ways: the size and decoration of graves and tombs, from a simple mound to a grand mausoleum; costly rites and materials; memorials and state funerals for important leaders; and, in some villages, separate cremation or burial grounds for different castes or communities. This is the same strategy archaeologists use for Harappan burials, where differences in the burial pit (some lined with bricks) and in the objects buried with the dead are studied, though the chapter notes that Harappan burials show little social differentiation.

Q. Should the stone artefacts illustrated in the chapter be considered as utilitarian objects or as luxuries? Are there any that may fall into both categories?

Answer: The chapter’s test: utilitarian objects are made fairly easily of ordinary materials such as stone or clay and are found throughout settlements; luxuries are rare, made of costly non-local materials, or made with complicated technologies.
Utilitarian: the saddle quern (Fig. 1.6), made of ordinary hard rock and showing signs of hard usage; stone blades (Fig. 1.2).
Luxuries: beads of carnelian, jasper and other stones (Figs. 1.2, 1.13), made from non-local stones by a long process of firing, chipping, flaking, grinding, polishing and drilling; the stone statue of the “priest-king” (Fig. 1.23), which is rare; the small cones of lapis lazuli, jasper and chalcedony, “most beautifully cut and finished” (Fig. 1.28).
Both categories: the chert weights (Fig. 1.2) were used in everyday exchange, yet they were precisely made to a standard system; the steatite seals (Fig. 1.1) were working objects for trade but carefully carved; and the stone cones may have been used in board-games (daily use) while made of precious stones. Like the faience spindle whorls the chapter mentions, such objects show that the two categories can overlap.

Q. What were the possible routes from the Harappan region to Oman, Dilmun and Mesopotamia?

Answer: Sea route (most likely): from coastal settlements such as Lothal in Gujarat, Sutkagendor on the Makran coast and Balakot on the Baluchistan coast, ships could sail west along the Arabian Sea coast to Oman (Magan), then into the Persian Gulf to Dilmun (probably Bahrain), and up the Gulf to Mesopotamia (Ur). The chapter gives the evidence: Mesopotamian texts call Meluhha a land of seafarers, ships and boats are depicted on seals (Fig. 1.20), a Harappan jar has been found in Oman, “Persian Gulf” seals in Bahrain carry Harappan motifs, and Dilmun weights followed the Harappan standard. River routes along the Indus and its tributaries would have carried goods down to the coast. Land route: overland westward across Baluchistan and the Iranian plateau, past sites such as Shahr-i-Sokhta and Tepe Yahya shown on Map 3, to Mesopotamia, with bullock carts as one means of transport.

Q. How many seals are impressed on this piece of clay?

Answer: The sealing from Ropar shows two clear seal impressions side by side: one on the left with a line of script, and one on the right with script above an animal motif. A row of signs along the lower edge seems to be part of a third, partly preserved impression, so two seals are clearly visible and possibly a third. This fits the chapter’s description of a sealing: wet clay on the knot of a bag “on which one or more seals were pressed”.

Q. What are some of the present-day methods used for long-distance exchange of goods? What are their advantages and problems?

Answer: Methods: road transport by trucks, railways, ships carrying sealed containers, air cargo, pipelines (for oil and gas), postal and courier services, and online orders paid for by digital payment. Advantages: goods move fast and in very large quantities; sealed and numbered containers and tracking numbers show that a parcel has not been tampered with and identify the sender, just as a Harappan sealing did; standard weights, measures and prices make exchange fair. Problems: high fuel costs and pollution; accidents and damage in transit; delays at borders, customs duties and paperwork; theft and online fraud; and disruption by wars, strikes, natural disasters or pandemics.

Q. Could everybody in Harappan society have been equal?

Answer: Probably not, though the evidence is mixed. Signs of difference: (i) some burial pits were lined with bricks and some graves had ornaments or copper mirrors; (ii) rare objects of valuable materials, such as faience pots, are concentrated in large settlements like Mohenjodaro and Harappa, and all gold jewellery comes from hoards; (iii) the raised, walled Citadel with special buildings was separated from the Lower Town; (iv) the uniformity of bricks, seals and weights, the planning of settlements, and labour mobilised on a huge scale (about four million person-days for the foundations at Mohenjodaro) suggest that someone took and implemented complex decisions; (v) people did different work as farmers, herders, craftspersons and traders. Signs of equality: some archaeologists think the society had no rulers and everybody enjoyed equal status; no spectacular finds were associated with the “palace”; Harappan burials show little social differentiation; and the chapter says the Harappans probably practised some sort of democratic system. So there may have been no all-powerful king, but differences of wealth and work probably existed.

Q. What are the similarities and differences between Maps 1, 2 and 4?

Answer: Similarities: all three maps cover the north-western part of the subcontinent around the Indus; Sind, Punjab and the eastern area of Haryana appear on all three (for example Siswal on Map 2 and “Late Siswal” on Map 4), and Gujarat appears on Maps 1 and 4 (Rangpur, and Rangpur II B-C).
Differences: (i) Map 2 (Early Harappan) shows small settlements in a few clusters, many of them in Baluchistan and Sind (Damb Sadaat, Amri-Nal, Kot Diji). (ii) Map 1 (Mature Harappan) shows the widest spread, with big cities and coastal settlements from the Makran coast to Gujarat. (iii) Map 4 (Late Harappan) shows a shift: by c. 1800 BCE most Mature Harappan sites in regions such as Cholistan had been abandoned, while population expanded into new settlements in Gujarat, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, seen in the dense clusters of Late Siswal and Rangpur II B-C; Swat, Cemetery H and Jhukar are the other groups, and Baluchistan is almost empty. There are no big cities on Map 4, matching the rural way of life of the “successor cultures”.

Q. Which of the themes in this chapter would have interested Cunningham? Which are the issues that have been of interest since 1947?

Answer: Cunningham: his main interest was the archaeology of the Early Historic (c. sixth century BCE to fourth century CE) and later periods; he used texts, inscriptions and the accounts of Chinese Buddhist pilgrims, and recovered artefacts he thought had cultural value. So he would have been interested in spectacular finds such as seals (he noted one, Fig. 1.24), stone statuary like the “priest-king”, inscriptions and the script, and Buddhist remains such as the stupa on the Citadel. Themes of everyday life (food, drains, houses, crafts) would have interested him less.
Since 1947: with Partition the major known sites became part of Pakistan, so Indian archaeologists tried to locate sites in India: surveys in Kutch, Punjab and Haryana and excavations at Kalibangan, Lothal, Rakhigarhi and Dholavira. Other issues: building a cultural sequence; the logic behind the location of sites; the functions of artefacts; subsistence, craft production and procurement of raw materials; social differences; international joint work and modern scientific techniques since the 1980s; archaeogenetic (DNA) research at Rakhigarhi; questions of gender; and the relationship between the Harappans and the Vedic people.

Q. What are the aspects of Harappan economy that have been reconstructed from archaeological evidence?

Answer: (i) Subsistence: crops (wheat, barley, lentil, chickpea, sesame, millets, some rice) from charred grains, and domesticated and wild animals, fish and fowl from bones. (ii) Agricultural technology: oxen for ploughing (bull on seals and terracotta), terracotta plough models from Cholistan and Banawali, the ploughed field at Kalibangan with two crops grown together. (iii) Irrigation: canals at Shortughai, wells, and reservoirs at Dholavira. (iv) Food processing: saddle querns and vessels. (v) Craft production: bead-making, shell-cutting, metal-working, seal-making and weight-making at Chanhudaro, shell objects at Nageshwar and Balakot, identified through raw material, tools, unfinished objects and waste. (vi) Procuring raw materials: settlements near sources (Shortughai for lapis lazuli, Lothal for carnelian, steatite and metal) and expeditions to Khetri for copper and to south India for gold. (vii) Transport: bullock carts (terracotta toy models, Fig. 1.29), river and coastal routes. (viii) Long-distance trade: copper from Oman, contacts with Dilmun and Mesopotamia (Meluhha’s carnelian, lapis lazuli, copper, gold and wood). (ix) Regulating exchange: seals and sealings, and a precise system of chert weights, binary in the lower denominations and decimal in the higher, with metal scale-pans.