Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c12.77

c12.77

The sequence at Harappā was found to be as follows (Fig. 20). The first settlement on the site was a village of folk using pottery of North Baluchistan black-on-red type, probably the RG IIIc phase, and there are considerable traces of devastating floods. The arrival of folk of the Harappā civilization is marked by the building of a great defensive wall, overlying but integral with an embankment, of mud and debris with a mud-brick core, evidently made to raise the foundations of the defences above flood-level. The main defensive wall was of mud brick, battered internally and externally and faced with a revetment of burnt brick on the outside, the whole structure being 40 feet wide at the base and rising to a height of some 35 feet (Pls. 1 and 2). It retained the great mud and mud-brick platform which carried the main buildings of the citadel, and in plan was a parallelogram 1200 by 600 feet, with a complex western gateway associated with ceremonial terraces and another re-entrant gate on the north - perhaps the main entrance. This defensive wall was reinforced by rectangular salients, some of which were carried higher than the main wall as towers.