Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c13.41

c13.41

It had already been noted by Vats in his excavations at Harappā that the superficial deposits of the mound, which represent the ruins of the Citadel, contained sherds of pottery of a distinctive type, dissimilar from that of the Harappā occupation of the city, but identical with that which he found in an important cemetery lying beyond the limits of the city on the south - the ‘cemetery H’, demonstrably subsequent to the Harappā period. Stone has noted that Wheeler’s excavations produced several segmented faience beads of types closely comparable to that equated with the Minoan faience bead of *c.* 1600 B.C., in these superficial layers of the citadel. The summit of the Citadel Mound is much disturbed by brick-robbing, and Vats did not establish an occupation layer to which this pottery could be assigned, but Wheeler in 1946 was able to show that his fourth (and final) period of construction at the West Gate and its associated terraces was in fact characterized by just this peculiar pottery. This last phase ‘followed an interval during which the structures relating to the terraces had fallen into decay and had been covered by debris. It is represented by fragments of poorly constructed buildings, presumably dwellings, with walls sometimes only one brick in thickness’.