An Encyclopaedia of Indian Archaeology v2.c38.243

v2.c38.243

The 7 m thick occupational debris has been divided by the excavator into two Pds, A and B, the first belonging to the mature Harappa culture and the second to a decadent stage thereof. Pd A has again been subdivided into four structural phases, I to IV, each phase separated from the preceding one by flood-borne deposits; Pd B is represented by a single Phase V. To meet the menace of floods which had destroyed Phase I, the people raised the structures of Phase II on massive mud-brick platforms, 1·2 to 3·6 m high, over which they laid a fresh township much more extensive than the preceding one and planned in the ture Harappa mode, with several blocks, streets and drains and an ‘acropolis’ with three blocks in the s. part, thus dividing the settlement into an upper and a lower town. While the structures were of mud brick, baked brick was used in bath-rooms and well-laid-out drains with manholes and soakage jars in the streets. The lower town provided accommodation for craftsmen—coppersmiths, goldsmiths, shell-workers and bead-makers, their shops and working-places marked by the remains of their craft. Thus, two coppersmiths had a brick-lined furnace, a cubical stone anvil, terracotta crucibles and copper implements; a bead factory had hundreds of carnelian beads in different stages of manufacture including finished ones and a circular kiln for the heating of the raw material. The technological skill of the people is attested by bronze drills of the auger type with twisted grooves, besides flanged ones, needles with eyelets at the piercing point or back end, a circular saw, terracotta plumb-bobs, and ivory scale with an extant length of 12·8 cm, with 27 divisions, in a length of 4·6 cm, and angle-measuring instruments.