Banawali

Sequence

Excavated from 1974 under R. S. Bisht, Banawali shows three phases: a pre-Harappan settlement, a mature Harappan city, and a late phase. The continuity through these levels makes it, with Kalibangan, one of the sites used to establish that the urban Indus phase developed from earlier local cultures in the region rather than arriving fully formed.

The pre-Harappan level has its own distinctive pottery and a settlement plan that the later town does not simply repeat.

Plan

Banawali is often cited as an exception to Indus regularity. The streets are not laid out on a strict grid, and the citadel is not separated from the lower town by an open space in the manner of Mohenjo-daro or Kalibangan but is incorporated within the same fortification, in a roughly semicircular arrangement.

This matters for how the civilization is characterised. Standardisation across the Indus zone is real — in brick proportions, weights and script — but town planning was more variable than the textbook description of a uniform grid suggests, and Banawali is the usual counter-example.

Finds

Excavation produced seals, weights, beads, terracotta figurines including a plough model, and a substantial quantity of barley. The site lies on the dry Ghaggar bed, and its abandonment is generally connected with the same hydrological changes that affected Kalibangan.