Rakhigarhi: Understanding the Largest Harappan Metropolis

#GS-1 #History #Ancient India #Culture #Art & Architecture #Heritage #Archaeology #Harappan Civilization

Context

The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) recently gave human skeletal remains from Rakhigarhi to the Anthropological Survey of India (AnSI).

Rakhigarhi is an ancient Bronze Age metropolis and serves as the largest known urban settlement of the Indus-Saraswati (Harappan) Civilization.
The location shows thousands of years of continuous human habitation while displaying a complete evolutionary layout from early to mature periods.

The site sits in the Narnaud tehsil of the Hisar district in Haryana, about 150 kilometers northwest of New Delhi.
It lies inside the fertile Ghaggar-Hakra river plain along the dry paleo-bed of the seasonal Sarasvati River.

The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) found and documented the site in the 1960s, with early work done by Professor Suraj Bhan in 1969.
Dr. Amarendra Nath from the ASI led major digs between 1997 and 2000, proving the giant scale of the city and finding old graves.
Professor Vasant Shinde from Deccan College managed large structural and skeletal digs from 2012 to 2016, increasing the known mound count and extracting ancient DNA.
Dr. Sanjay Manjul from the Institute of Archaeology directed modern field work from 2022 through 2026, finding unique cemetery items at Mound No. 7.

People built houses using standard burnt and mud terracotta bricks along paved public roads that reached up to 1.92 meters in width.
The city features complex brick-lined covered wastewater drains that run from houses straight into main street sewage channels.
A large public granary was found in mature layers, featuring mud-brick walls and seven large rectangular chambers.
Mound No. 1 acted as an old manufacturing zone with cloth-dyeing setups, terracotta kilns, and a special gold foundry containing a furnace and over 3,000 unpolished semi-precious gemstones.
Mound No. 7 acts as the main burial ground where recent 2025-26 digs showed graves containing up to 40 distinct pottery offerings next to skeletons laid in a north-south direction.
Excavations also brought up standard chert trade weights, copper fish hooks, animal figurines, brick fire altars, and unique steatite cylinder seals with Harappan symbols and alligator pictures.