Photo: Balurbala · CC BY-SA 4.0A vast Iron Age burial ground where the dead were laid in great clay urns with iron tools, bronze vessels and gold ornaments.
Rea opened hundreds of urns on the low hill above the river. They held skeletons, iron swords, spears and sickles, bronze bowls and lids topped with animals and birds, gold diadems and fine black-and-red pottery. The ASI’s trenches of 2004–05 found more urns with skeletons and a habitation area near by.
It shows a rich Iron Age people on the Tamirabarani well before the Sangam poems, skilled in iron and bronze.
ExcavationHundreds of sandstone shelters where people lived and painted for thousands of years, the oldest gallery of human art in Bharat.
ExcavationEleven molar crowns from nine adults with neat holes drilled into them, the earliest evidence of dentistry on living people anywhere.
ExcavationA Sarasvati-valley settlement whose levels run from Hakra ware pit-dwellings up to a mature Harappan town, and whose earliest dates are argued over.
ExcavationThe oldest ploughed field yet excavated anywhere, with its furrows still visible in a grid.
ExcavationA Harappan city in a dry land that lived by catching every drop: dams on two seasonal streams fed a chain of reservoirs cut into the rock around the town.
ExcavationThe first city of the civilisation to be dug, which gave its name to the whole culture.
ExcavationThe largest city of the Sindhu valley, laid out in a grid of baked-brick streets with covered drains and a great bath on its citadel.
ExcavationRows of small clay-lined fire pits on raised brick platforms, with a well and bathing floors beside them.
