The Indus Civilization (Cambridge History of India, Supplementary Volume) c13.29

c13.29

It has sometimes been suggested that the bearers of the cemetery H culture were the destroyers of the older Harappā. This may be so, and the alleged mingling of Harappan and "cemetery H" pottery with the human bones in Area G (p. 49) would support the possibility if the evidence was correctly observed. But the excavations of 1946 tended to indicate a hiatus between the two. The great depth of Harappan debris—up to 7 ft. or more—which intervened between cemetery R 37 and at any rate the later phase of cemetery H may be due in part to the deliberate filling of a hollow here in late Harappan times. The fact that a part of cemetery H cut into the walls of a derelict Harappan building¹ means only that *some* Harappan structures were of earlier date. But the remains of jerry-built houses of the cemetery H culture found against the western defences of the citadel on 4 ft. of debris can scarcely be so summarily explained. Whether indeed this accumulation occurred before the end of the Indus civilization, as may be the fact, or whether it represents a post-Harappan, pre-cemetery H hiatus, cannot yet be determined. The complete absence of true Harappan ceramic from cemetery H tells slightly in favour of the latter alternative. At least it is wiser at present not to assume a temporal continuity between the Harappan culture and that of cemetery H.