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Kalibangan : Death from Natural Causes

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Kalibangan : Death from Natural Causes ANTIQUITY, XLII, 1968 Kalibangan : Death from Natural Causes by ROBERT RAIKES Mr R. L. Raikes is a hydrologist who is head of the firm of Raikes and Partners, consulting engineers in Rome. We recently published an article by him on ‘The Mohenjo-daro Floods’ (ANTIQUITY, 1965, 196), in which he concluded that Mohmjo-daro and ‘inevitably all other sites in the same general area of the Indus jlood-plain, were gradually engulfed by mud’. This article provoked discussion and comment in subsequent numbers. Mr Raikes now considers the end of Kalibangan some time in the 18thcentury BC and excludes the hypothesis of catastrophic climate change. As he has recently been accused of being a prophet of the New Catastrophism, he says that here it is rather a relief to him to be able, with conviction, to exclude catastrophic climate change. ALIBANGAN, which has been ex- Sind and the central Punjab-Mohenjo-daro, K cavated during recent years-and is still Harappa, Chanhu-daro, Judeir-jo daro, being excavated at the time of writing-by the Lohumjo-daro, to name but a few-may be of Archaeological Survey of India, is one of the significance. For, whereas the other ‘cities’ more important sites of the Harappan Civiliza- named were constructed largely of burnt brick, tion in India (FIG. I). Interim reports on it have Kalibangan was mainly of mud-brick construc- been published in Indian Archaeology. The tion. Some use of burnt brick there certainly subject of this short paper will in due course be was but the comparative rarity of it suggests the published in full, with the necessary technical possibility that the means of producing large details, in Ancient India. quantities of burnt brick did not match the Kalibangan has many things in common with knowledge of how to do so. In other words it sites such as Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, suggests a possible lack of abundant fuel. including virtually the whole repertoire of In 1968 I had the opportunity of carrying out pottery, flint industry, carved seals, figurines a brief environmental survey of the site and its and the like as well as an apparent division into surroundings through the generosity of the two well-defined areas: a western smaller area, British Academy and the University Museum of tentatively identified as the citadel area; and a the University of Pennsylvania. This generous larger eastern area thought to be the residential support as well as the extreme courtesy and co- and business quarter. Its size approaches that operation of the Archaeological Survey of of Judeir-jo daro (which is also divided into two India are most gratefully acknowledged. areas but in a quite different way)-a Harappan The basic problem was that of the reason for site that I discovered on the Kacchi plain in Sind the abandonment of Kalibangan some time in not far from Jacobabad. Judeir-jo daro is the 18th century BC. Various possibilities generally regarded as an important site and it existed; many of them still exist. Only the seems improbable that Kalibangan was of hypothesis of sudden and dramatic-indeed significantly less importance. catastrophic-climate change must, I think, be For this reason the principal difference excluded. The other principal hypotheses are: between Kalibangan and the main sites in a sudden diversion of what was once the River 286 KALIBANGAN: DEATH FROM NATURAL CAUSES Fig. I. Map showing site of Kalibangan (India) Ghaggar into the Ganges system; collapse of the clay and coarse sand that describe the materials whole Harappan Empire consequent on the found by us. Let it suffice to say that these collapse of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, for one terms have special significance in the professions or other or all of the various explanations put in which they are common currency. The special forward; the loss by diversion to its present significance attaches to the means by which such course of a prehistoric Sutlej; there are probably materials are deposited. others. The first of these hypotheses appears to We found, at a depth of about LI m. below be right. the present flood-plain level, a coarse, greyish Through the cooperation of the Archaeo- sand very similar in mineral content to that logical Survey of India and their willingness to found in the bed of the present-day Yamuna consult also the Geological Survey of India I (Jumna). It extended over a width at least four had the advice of both those archaeologists- times that of the bed of the present-day Mr B. B. Lal, then Joint Deputy Director Yamuna and down to a depth, at one point at General, and Mr B. K. Thapar-most familiar least, of 30 m. Within the II m. of deposits with the site, and of Mr R. K. Karanth, overlying this sand we found mainly a material Geologist in charge of the whole of Rajasthan which emerged as a clayey silt but which and Gujerat. probably, in the undisturbed state which we This is not the place for a full description of could not examine with the equipment available, the limited drilling programme carried out consists of intercalated silty clay and silt; the under the general supervision of Mr Karanth existence of some silty clay was borne out by a and myself, or of its results (FIG. 2). I do not few tenacious pieces of this material which propose to give definitions of terms such as silty reached the surface. This material in short is Fig. 2. Plan showing bare-hales typical flood-plain deposit of the kind being manner in which its meandering channel has laid down today at a rate of about zm. per migrated across the 10 to 15 km. width of the thousand years.* We also found, at varying plain. The present Western Yamuna Main depths in the four boreholes, shallow beds of a Canal evidently incorporates considerable parts fine silty sand still containing the grey granite- of a former channel that followed the extreme derived material that occurs in the Yamuna, western boundary of the plain. Near Indri this consistent with the various meander channels of western boundary is barely definable in terms of an aggrading river (FIG. 3). levels, for the plain to the west of the Main Unfortunately air photos were not available Canal slopes gently but continuously towards so recourse was had to available and very the Indus system: to the east it slopes gently detailed large-scale maps of the area. Study of towards the present Yamuna which occupies a the contours where these are shown and of spot- former back-swamp area. The Yamuna today is levels where they are not shown was very part of the Ganga (Ganges) system. revealing. The map study extended far north The area to the west of the Main Canal into the Siwaliks, north-west to the Sutlej and indicates numerous small lakes of which many east and north-east to the Yamuna and included have the typical form of abandoned ox-bow the latter down to somewhat south of Indri. bends. This area was known in earliest historic The present Yamuna flood-plain shows on the times by the Sanskrit name of Sarasvati: map almost as clearly as on air photos the Mr B. B. La1 informs me that this can be translated as a 'river' reduced to the condition of * Sir Claude Inglis, The Behaviour and Control of Rivers and Canals, Government of India Research a chain of pools. Publication no. 13 (Poona, 1049). Excavations carried out at an Early Historic 288 KALIBANGAN: DEATH FROM NATURAL CAUSES Level of LoessTerrace andofHamppanand BH4 BH3 BH2 I pre-Hamppan fdns. Arbitrary datum ~. t - -.-.- GHAGGAR------ FLOOD PLAIN Possible Flood Plain Hurappan times FINE SAND ED. SANDM noriton pporl dehned Fig. 3. Schematic cross-section through bed of former Ghaggar River looking upstream Site near Kalibangan, but situated in the flood- No records were available to us at the time to plain whereas Kalibangan is above and beside indicate what conditions were like before the flood-plain, showed that the lowest level is irrigation of the Ghaggar was started in modern about 3 m. below the present flood-plain level. times. The absence of any defined channel in the This lowest level would correspond with a date Ghaggar flood-plain points to a very long period of about IOO BC. The Early Historic Sites along of very attenuated seasonal floods with slow the Ghaggar remained in general to about build-up of sediments. An estimate of the rate AD 500 when they were abandoned. of such build-up has been made from archaeo- Between these most recent occupations and logical evidence which shows that it is slower the Pre-Harappan/Harappan sequence, dated than that of a perennially overflowing river to about BC, there were other (that is about 2 m. per years). 2500-1750 1,000 occupants of the Ghaggar Valley. The people The general hypothesis, which emerges from responsible for Painted Grey Ware occupied the calculations that form part of the full article sites along the Ghaggar and also northwards and from the archaeological evidence that fits along the relatively small and intermittently so neatly into the picture, is of alternating flowing stream (the true Ghaggar which has lent capture of the Yamuna by the Indus and Ganges its name to the wide and now waterless flood systems respectively. That low and almost plain that stretches to the Indus) that drains a indiscernible watershed between the. two relatively small area of the Siwalik Hills to the systems and the slow migration westward of the west of the Yamuna.
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