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<< Text Pages >> Shikarpur - Ancient Village or Settlement in India

Submitted by DrewParsons on Sunday, 30 May 2010  Page Views: 7531

Multi-periodSite Name: Shikarpur Alternative Name: Valmio Timbo
Country: India Type: Ancient Village or Settlement
Nearest Town: Morbi  Nearest Village: Shikarpur
Latitude: 23.237500N  Longitude: 70.677600E
Condition:
5Perfect
4Almost Perfect
3Reasonable but with some damage
2Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site
1Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks
0No data.
-1Completely destroyed
2 Ambience:
5Superb
4Good
3Ordinary
2Not Good
1Awful
0No data.
no data Access:
5Can be driven to, probably with disabled access
4Short walk on a footpath
3Requiring a bit more of a walk
2A long walk
1In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find
0No data.
3 Accuracy:
5co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates
4co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map
3co-ordinates scaled from a bad map
2co-ordinates of the nearest village
1co-ordinates of the nearest town
0no data
5

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Shikarpur is a 4,500 year old Harappan settlement in Kutch, western India and forms part of the Indus Valley (or Harappan) Civilisation whose main sites are Harappa and Mohenjo-daro. Situated on a mound locally known as Valmio Timbo measuring about 3.4 hectares, it is located 4.5 km south of Shikarpur village at the edge of a narrow creek which extends eastward from the Gulf of Kutch giving it strategic importance.

Initially excavated between 1987 and 1989 with inconclusive results, the current major excavations have been underway since 2007 and have revealed that Shikarpur was a vast settlement surrounded by a fortified structure made from unbaked mud bricks with 10 metre thick walls and constructed in the Harappan style. It is believed to be about 4,500 years old. Finds include classical Harappan pottery and small amounts of regional pottery with cloth impressions, large chert blades and cores, several model terracotta cart frames and wheels, seals, figurines of bulls and other animals and terracotta bangles. There is a sensual terracotta figurine of a female broken off below the knees and above the chest with unusual detail normally not seen in Harappan figurines.

References:
Excavations at Shikarpur 2007-2008: K Bhan and P Ajithprasad:
http://www.harappa.com/goladhoro/Excavations-at-Shikarpur-2007.pdf


Note: Vast settlement believed to be 4500 years old and Harappan excavated in Western India. Indus valley east theory challenged, see comments
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"Shikarpur" | Login/Create an Account | 2 News and Comments
  
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Re: Shikarpur by DrewParsons on Friday, 21 May 2010
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News Item resourced by coldrum: Indus Valley east theory challenged

A study of hundreds of ancient Indus Valley civilisation sites has revealed previously unsuspected patterns of growth and decline that challenge a long-standing idea of a solely eastward-moving wave of Indus urbanisation.

Researchers at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMS), Chennai, combined data from archaeology, radiocarbon dating, and river flows to study how settlements around the Indus Valley region had evolved from around 7000 BC till 1000 BC.

Their analysis of 1,874 Indus region settlements has shown that the Indus urbanisation had three epicentres — Mehrgarh in present-day Baluchistan, Gujarat, and sites along an ancient river called the Ghaggar-Hakra in Haryana and Punjab.

The findings, published in Current Science, a journal of the Indian Academy of Sciences, dispute suggestions by international researchers that farming and urbanisation in the region was driven by a “wave of advance” moving eastward.

“We’re looking at large-scale patterns of how the Indus civilisation changed over time,” said Ronojoy Adhikari, a theoretical physicist at the IMS, who led a team that analysed geographic movements of Indus region settlements over hundreds of years.

“It’s like looking at something from a mountain-top — you get a different perspective than from examining archaeological sites,” Adhikari told The Telegraph. The analysis has also bolstered evidence for the idea that the civilisation did not abruptly collapse.

The 7000 BC site at Mehrgarh, Baluchistan, provides the earliest evidence for wheat and barley farming on the Indian subcontinent. But the new study and earlier archaeological data suggest that the Indus civilisation may have picked up rice cultivation from eastern India.

“This work provides new evidence to suggest that the Indus Valley civilisation had influences from the west and from the east — it was not a one-way west-to-east flow,” said Vasant Shinde, an archaeologist with Deccan College, Pune, who was not associated with the study.

Shinde said archaeological excavations had pointed to rice cultivation near present-day Gorakhpur in around 7000 BC — the same period as wheat and barley farming in Mehrgarh. Remains of burnt rice from sites in Haryana and Rajasthan, dated to between 4000 BC and 3500 BC, and signs of rice cultivation in the Indus Valley region around 2500 BC suggest an east-to-west flow of rice cultivation, Shinde said.

The analysis by Adhikari and his colleagues shows a dense distribution of Indus Valley sites around 2500 BC which marks the beginning of the mature period of the civilisation — lasting about 600 years until about 1900 BC.

The researchers believe it is during this period of high stability that the civilisation’s culture matured, leading to its script, the design of seals, and weights and measures. Adhikari said it was still unclear what kind of political organisation contributed to this uniformity in culture.

The study shows a “catastrophic reduction” in the number of sites in the Ghaggar-Hakra region around 1900 BC. Over time, the Indus sites moved upstream, but they were smaller in size and appear to show a breakdown in large urbanisation. But the decline around Mehrgarh and Gujarat occurred at a much slower pace.

Gujarat remained relatively unscathed during the Ghaggar-Hakra collapse, Adhikari said. Archaeologists say the findings are consistent with the idea that a slow decline of the Indus urbanisaton eventually gave way to the growth of settlements along the Gangetic plain. “I think the most significant aspect of this work is its demonstration of a new way to look at the remote past,” Shinde said.

Several international researchers, including Stanford University geneticist Luigi Cavalli-Sforza, have argued that farming originated about 10,000 years ago in

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Re: Shikarpur by DrewParsons on Thursday, 20 May 2010
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4,500-year-old Harappan settlement excavated in Kutch

A vast settlement surrounded by a fortified structure believed to be about 4,500 years old and belonging to the Harappan civilisation has been excavated at Shikarpur village in Kutch district.

The team which has been excavating the site in Bhachau taluka of Kutch since last three years, is headed by Kuldeep Bhan and P Ajithprasad of the Department of Archaeology and Ancient History of the Maharaja Sayajirao University, Vadodara.

"A huge fortified structure made out of unbaked mud bricks has been excavated by our team. The ratio of height, width and length of the bricks is 1:2:4 which is what we call Harappan ratio," Ajithprasad told PTI.

"The fortification is spread over nearly one hectare area, with 10 m thick walls," he said.

"Though the exact period when this structure could have been constructed is yet to be ascertained, primarily it appears to be roughly 4500-years-old, built between 2500 BC and 2200 BC and is part of the Harappan civilisation," Ajithprasad said.

"The purpose of building such thick walls could be protection from natural calamities, external enemy or to impress upon other settlements," he added.
According to the professor, the fortification has an open space in the centre with small structures surrounding it.

"The site is one quarter the size of the biggest Harappan site in the state located in Dholavira, Kutch and four times the size of another site of the same era in Bagasra," Ajithprasad said. Situated on a mound locally known as Valmio Timbo (mound) measuring about 3.4 hectares, it is located 4.5 km south of Shikarpur village at the edge of the narrow creek extending eastward from the Gulf of Kutch. It is close to National Highway-15 connecting Kutch district with other parts of the state.

"The site was earlier excavated from 1987 to 1989 by the Gujarat State Archaeology Department but details about it were not published and whatever little was published was inconclusive," Ajithprasad said.

Therefore, the site was taken up for re-excavation due to its strategic location and establish the cultural sequence as well as the settlement features in terms of economic activities, he added.

During the three years of excavation, the site has revealed Harappan artifacts, especially ceramics and triangular terracotta cakes, spread rather evenly on the surface. In addition to the classical Harappan pottery, the surface assemblage included small amounts of regional pottery. Other sites of Harappan civilisation excavated in Gujarat include Kanmer in Kutch, Gola Dhoro (Bagasara), Nageshwar, Nagwada, Kuntasi in northern Saurashtra and Juni Kuran in northern Kutch.

This news item resourced by coldrum.
http://www.deccanherald.com/content/56757/4500-year-old-harappan-settlement.html
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