Photo: Muhammad Bin Naveed · CC BY-SA 3.0The first city of the civilisation to be dug, which gave its name to the whole culture.
Charles Masson saw the mounds in the 1820s, and Alexander Cunningham visited and published a seal from them in 1875. By then railway contractors had carried away bricks from the mounds for the Lahore–Multan line. Sahni’s trenches of 1921 found seals like those Banerji was finding at Mohenjo-daro, and in 1924 Marshall announced a new civilisation. Excavation has gone on here into this century.
It began the modern recovery of Bharat’s oldest cities.
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 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.
ExcavationA small steatite seal of a figure seated in a yogic posture, wearing a horned headdress and surrounded by animals, whom many see as Pashupati, Lord of creatures.
