Hearths and Combustion Features
- PDF / 4,340,553 Bytes
- 54 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 44 Downloads / 200 Views
HARAPPA Joseph Schuldenrein Geoarchaeology Research Associates, Yonkers, NY, USA
Introduction Together with Mohenjo-daro, Harappa is the signature site of the third millennium BC culture of South Asia known as the Indus Valley or Harappan Civilization (Kenoyer, 1998; Possehl, 2002). The site formed the epicenter of a state society contemporaneous with the Mesopotamian and Egyptian cultures to the west, and it featured analogous elements of complex urban organization, trade, and commerce. In contrast with these other “cradles of civilization,” Harappan script, while pervasive across the area’s cultural heartland (Pakistan and India), remains undeciphered. There is, however, a growing body of archaeological evidence for contact among these three state-based societies. Geoarchaeology of Harappa and the Indus Valley The site of Harappa is in north-central Pakistan (Figure 1). It consists of at least four major mounds, which are the product of the accumulation of cultural deposits documenting the site’s evolution as a major urban center whose date range is 3300–1700 BC. As is the case with Near Eastern tells, the Harappan mound complex was built on a base of natural floodplain sediments that irregularly flooded the local trunk stream, the Ravi River. The Ravi is one of “the Five Rivers,” a series of subjacent, southwest trending drainages along which smaller Harappan mound complexes emerged. These Upper Indus channel and terrace landscapes emerge from the foothills of the Himalayas. They converge in central Pakistan to form the Indus River proper. The 17 m high Harappan mound complex was recognized as early as 1834, and excavations date to the late nineteenth century, continuing into the twentieth century.
Modern scientific archaeological research was initiated in the 1980s by combined US-based teams (chiefly Harvard, the University of Wisconsin, and New York University) and several European institutions. Work has been ongoing, intermittently, under the auspices of the Department of Archaeology and Museums, Government of Pakistan. Baseline stratigraphic relations for the Harappa site were established by Wheeler (1947), who identified the base of the mound at an unconformity separating “natural” from “cultural” sediments. Two stratified units comprise the natural sediments; the uppermost is described as “alluvium” and the lower as “a dark brown earth” (Meadow et al., 1998). While over 100 radiocarbon dates have been processed to refine the 17 m high cultural stratigraphies, these pre-cultural horizons were only recently dated to the terminal Pleistocene. The unconformity marks an early Holocene interval of nondeposition (and probable cumulic soil development) at the site (Schuldenrein et al., 2004). Examination of the profile implicated longer-term stability of the upper alluvium. It represents a buried surface marking the top of a deeply weathered Pleistocene paleosol (ABk horizon) that graded into the lower “dark brown earth” (Bt1k-Bt2-Bt3y-C horizons). More comprehensive mapping of the alluvial landscape incorporati
Data Loading...
