The Indus Civilization (Cambridge History of India, Supplementary Volume) c13.5

c13.5

More wholeheartedly Harappan is the culture of another fortified site, at Ali Murad, on a sandy plain some 20 miles south-west of Dadu in Sind. There a mound 27 ft. high was encompassed by a stone defensive wall enclosing an irregular squarish area, about 250 yds. each way. The wall was built of roughly dressed stone blocks, each about 2 ft. long and 1 ft. square in cross-section, and was approximately 5 ft. thick. A gap in the south side probably represented an entrance. The enclosure contained a well and “visible traces of innumerable stone walls”,¹ and there were traces of a structure outside the southern defences. Decorated black-on-red pottery with hatched patterns, including pipal leaves, of normal Harappan type were found; together with terra-cotta figurines of bull and probably pig, chert flakes, a small bronze or copper flat-axe, beads of steatite, agate and carnelian, and “thousands of terra-cotta ‘imitation cakes’” (see p. 69).