Dholavira

Plan

Dholavira departs from the two-part layout usual at Indus sites. It has three divisions — a citadel, a middle town and a lower town — enclosed within a massive stone fortification, with a large open area between citadel and middle town that has been interpreted as a ceremonial ground.

The construction is of stone rather than the baked brick typical elsewhere, reflecting local materials, and the workmanship of the masonry is exceptionally fine.

Water

The site lies in an arid zone between two seasonal streams, and its survival depended on storing monsoon runoff. A system of dams diverted the streams into a series of very large rock-cut and masonry reservoirs, at least sixteen of which have been identified, occupying a substantial proportion of the enclosed area.

This is the most elaborate water-harvesting system known from the ancient world at this date, and it is the feature for which the site is chiefly noted.

The signboard

A row of ten large characters in the Indus script, each some 37 centimetres high and made of gypsum inlay, was found fallen near the northern gate of the citadel, where it had apparently been mounted on a wooden board above the entrance.

It is the largest known inscription in the script by a wide margin, and would presumably have named the place or its ruler. Since the script is undeciphered, it names nothing that can be read, which is a fair summary of the state of Indus epigraphy.

Status

Dholavira was excavated from 1989 under R. S. Bisht, and was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2021. It is among the best-preserved Indus sites in India, in part because its remoteness spared it the brick robbing that damaged sites further north.