Coming soon: Facts about mysteries of Harappa
Deepender Deswal in Hisar
Archaeologists and other experts are inching closer to unravel the mysteries of the Harappan civilization. They have carried out a series of archaeological and anthropological analyses of the skeletal evidences extracted from the burial grounds in two mounds of Rakhigarhi village of Hisar. These may give a glimpse of rituals and practices performed by the Harappan societies. These also indicate that people during the Harappan period living in northwestern parts of South Asia might have shared burial practices and heritages.
The cemetery was discovered in Rakhigarhi village, thought to be one of the most important political and economic centres of the mature Harappan era, dating back to around 4000-4500 years. The common heritage, practices and trade links among people on a large area and even outside Asia point towards a flourished civilization.
The Deccan College Post-Graduate and Research Institute, Pune, carried out excavation in the three seasons from 2013 to 2016. The team of the Deccan College, led by vice chancellor Prof Vasant Shinde, had performed the excavations and collaborated with the Seoul National University College Of Medicine, South Korea, for bio-anthropological analysis on the basis of the skeletons recovered from the cemeteries at Rakhigarhi. The Korean scientists have carried out DNA extraction and examination at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad.
The excavations had unearthed a total of 53 graves in necropolis at Rakhigarhi site that was classified as primary burials, secondary burials, symbolic burials and unused pit chambers, revealed a first paper published by the team of researchers after studying the anthropology of the humans residing in the Harappan era in this region.
The paper published recently in PLOS One, Vasant Shinde, Yong Jun Kim, Eun Jin Woo, Nilesh Jadhav and others pointed out that 34 graves had typical burials while seven cases were found to be atypical ones. The cases of graves having singular supine burial inside simple pit are sub-categorized as typical and brick-lined graves, multiple bodies, or prone-positioned burials. These are termed as atypical burials.
Besides, they also recovered five secondary burials (human bones with votive — consecrated in fulfillment of a vow — pots), six symbolic burials (only votive pots) and one unused pit chamber at the necropolis area. “We suspected that unused pit might have been built in preparation for a funeral, but was eventually abandoned for reasons as yet unknown. If this actually is as we conjecture — an unused pit chamber — it is a very rare case in the field of Harappan archaeology. Only one similar case, from Farmana (Rohtak) cemetery, has been reported”, the paper stated.
The archaeologists had found 46 sets of complete or partial skeletals from these burial grounds of which 37 skeletals were taken for anthropological examination by the team of researchers.
Commenting on the findings about the status of women based on anthropological examination, the paper commented, “ As the number of votive pots in those graves somewhat differed by sex — higher in males’ graves than females’ — there might have been, among some Rakhigarhi people at least, discriminatory attitudes toward women with respect to the construction of graves. In a statistical analysis of the votive pots from atypical burials, however, we failed to find any significance for difference by sex due to the insufficient sample size”.
Talking to The Tribune, Prof Vasant Shinde said that they had been able to make a major breakthrough about the people of Harappan civilization and the final results would be out soon. Prof Shinde said they had extracted the DNA of the skeletal recovered from the burial grounds and the work on the data analysis and interpretation was almost complete. Their study about the facial reconstruction of the Harappan people is also likely to be out soon, he said.
