The Indus Civilization (Cambridge History of India, Supplementary Volume) c12.9

c12.9

In the principal mound (Mound II), the three Harappan occupations were separated by layers of debris and silt and bore no structural relationship to one another. It was inferred that the town had been twice destroyed by inundations and twice rebuilt on a fresh plan. At the lowest level (Piggott's Ia or Mackay's Harappā III), parts of three or four small brick houses and a well perhaps of earlier origin were identified. The site was then apparently deserted for a time and was subsequently rebuilt, with an extensive use of mud-brick platforms, presumably designed to raise the structures above flood-level. The principal buildings in the excavated area were grouped about a street 25 ft. wide which was crossed by lanes at right angles, both street and lanes being marked by well-built drains of normal Harappan type and showing characteristic evidence of regular maintenance. Most of the inhabitants hereabouts are thought to have been artisans. Many bronze or copper tools and implements, some of them unfinished castings, were found both in isolation and in considerable hoards; and there was evidence of bead-making, shell and bone-working, and seal-making. With bead-making is thought to have been associated a remarkable brick floor provided with a criss-cross of underlying flues. It was noted that the walls of the building were too thin to have been those of a sweating-chamber, neither was there ash or other evidence of any considerable heat in the flues. A number of beads, many unfinished and including a concreted mass of minute steatite beads, lay on the adjacent earth floor, and suggested to the excavator that the floor with flues had been built for glazing them but had never been used. Indeed, the general abundance of objects on the floors of the whole group of structures was thought to indicate a hasty evacuation.