Kalibangan

The site

Kalibangan has two mounds: a smaller western citadel and a larger lower town, both fortified, following the standard Indus arrangement. Excavation under B. B. Lal and B. K. Thapar from 1961 revealed an earlier pre-Harappan settlement beneath the mature-phase city, which made the site important for establishing the sequence from early to urban phases.

The name means black bangles, from the quantity of dark terracotta bangle fragments on the surface.

The ploughed field

Beneath the pre-Harappan level, excavators found a field surface preserving a criss-cross pattern of furrows, running at right angles in two directions with different spacings — the arrangement still used in the region for growing two crops in one field.

It is the earliest ploughed field yet found anywhere, and it establishes the technique in the region well before the urban period.

The fire altars

On the citadel mound, and in some houses, were found rows of brick-lined pits containing ash, charcoal and terracotta cakes, together with a well and bathing platforms.

The excavators interpreted these as fire altars, and the interpretation has been used to argue for ritual continuity between the Indus civilization and later Vedic fire practice. Others have pointed out that hearths for cooking or industrial use can look similar, and that the identification carries a great deal of weight in arguments about Indus religion that the evidence does not obviously bear. The caution is worth stating: no Indus structure has been securely identified as a place of worship.

Abandonment

The site sits on the bed of the Ghaggar, which is now dry. Kalibangan appears to have been abandoned while other Indus settlements continued, and the drying or diversion of the river is the usual explanation, which connects it to the wider argument about the role of hydrology in the civilization's decline.