An Encyclopaedia of Indian Archaeology v1.c9.s9.53

v1.c9.s9.53

To sum up. The dates arrived at on the basis of the occurrence of the antiquities of the Indus style at w. Asian sites on the one hand and those obtained by the ¹⁴C method on the other give a more or less consistent picture, which is as follows. Since the Indus civilization had already established trade contacts with Mesopotamia by the Early Dynastic III times (*c.* 2550 B.C.), it may have originated some time at the beginning of the second quarter of the 3rd millennium B.C. The trade was at its peak in the Sargonid period (*c.* 2350 B.C.) but dwindled by the Larsa times (*c.* 1950). At no site do the corrected ¹⁴C dates place the end of the civilization later than the Larsa-contact date. Thus the overall range of the Indus civilization may be placed between *c.* 2700 and *c.* 1900 B.C., with the remark that whereas sites in the nuclear region of Sind and Punjab may have begun in the earlier part of this bracket those in the peripheral regions of Rajasthan, Haryana and Gujarat may have come into being a century or two later. A similar pattern would seem to apply to their ends as well.