An Encyclopaedia of Indian Archaeology v1.c9.s7.8

v1.c9.s7.8

There has been a tendency to see in any Chalcolithic or Bronze Age discoveries in Sind and further w. the seeds of the Harappa culture with its urbanism—such as those at Shahr-i-Sokhta (Seistan), Tepe Yahya (s.-e. Iran), Mundigak (s.-e. Afghanistan), Namazga (Turkmenia), Mehrgarh (Bolan area), etc. This has been ably refuted by Gupta, 1979, 2, p. 261: ‘there is practically nothing at Sokhta which may be called Harappan; there is hardly a couple of items at Tepe Yahya which are Harappan; there is very little Harappan at Mundigak and Namazgah IV ... At sites like Mehrgarh, it is now more than clear. The basic character of the cultures of Baluchistan and Afghanistan could not develop even a single Harappa or Ur, none of these geographical areas in e. Iran and Turkmenia could develop it. All of them witnessed the rise in culture only up to the Proto-urban stage marked by one or two monumental structures [which are a characteristic of urbanism but not necessarily the models of the Harappa ones], like Mundigak (Palace), Altin-Depe (Ziggurat), Shahr-i-Sokhta (Burnt House), Mehrgarh (monumental brick platform with a colonnade of square mud-brick pillars in its front).’ At Shortugai in n. Afghanistan, the n. most site with Harappa contacts (Dupree, 1981, pp. 103-15), there are at least seven Harappa settlements, but they were probably meant to trade in local materials and have nothing to do with the origins of the Harappa culture. Pd IV of Amri in the lower Indus valley (Casal, 1979, pp. 99-112) has mature Harappa relics but no genetic relationship with the preceding remains; it cannot therefore be regarded as having contributed anything substantial to the make-up of the Harappa culture, in spite of its having been called an ‘introduction to the history of the Indus civilization’ (Casal, 1979). At Balakot in the Las Bela valley there is an admitted hiatus of unknown duration between Pd I, pre-Harappa, and Pd II, Harappa (Dales, 1979, pp. 45-53), so that one would look in vain there for the origin of the latter.