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Mehrgarh, Pakistan and Life in the Indus Valley Before Harappa
The Roots of the Chalcolithic Indus Civilization
Aceramic Neolithic
The earliest settled portion of Mehrgarh is found in an area called MR.3, in the northeast corner of the immense site. Mehrgarh was a small farming and pastoralist village between 7000-5500 BC, with mud brick houses and granaries. The early residents used local copper ore, basket containers lined with bitumen, and an array of bone tools.
Plant foods used during this period included domesticated and wild six-rowed barley, domestic einkorn and emmer wheat, and wild Indian jujube (Zizyphus spp) and date palms (Phoenix dactylifera). Sheep, goats, and cattle were herded at Mehrgarh beginning during this early period. Hunted animals include gazelle, swamp deer, nilgai, blackbuck onager, chital, water buffalo, wild pig and elephant.
The earliest residences at Mehrgarh were freestanding, multi-roomed rectangular houses built with long, cigar-shaped and mortared mudbricks: these structures are very similar to Prepottery Neolithic (PPN) hunter-gatherers in early 7th millennium Mesopotamia. Burials were placed in brick-lined tombs, accompanied by shell and turquoise beads. Even at this early date, the similarities of crafts, architecture, and agricultural and funerary practices indicate some sort of connection between Mehrgarh and Mesopotamia.
Neolithic Period II 5500 to 4800
By the sixth millennium, agriculture had become firmly established at Mehrgarh, based on mostly (~90 percent) locally domesticated barley but also wheat from the near east. The earliest pottery was made by sequential slab construction, and the site contained circular fire pits filled with burnt pebbles and large granaries, characteristics also of similarly dated Mesopotamian sites.
Buildings made of sun-dried brick were large and rectangular, symmetrically divided into small square or rectangular units. They were doorless and lack of residential remains, suggesting to researchers that at least some of they were storage facilities for grains or other commodities which were communally shared. Other buildings are standardized rooms surrounded by large open work spaces where craft-working activities took place, including the beginnings of the extensive bead-making characteristic of the Indus.
Chalcolithic Period III 4800 to 3500 and IV 3500 to 3250 BC
By the Chalcolithic Period III at Mehrgarh, the community, now well over 100 hectares, consisted of large spaces with groups of building divided into residences and storage units, but more elaborate, with foundations of pebbles embedded in clay. The bricks were made with molds, and along with fine painted wheel-thrown pottery, and a variety of agricultural and craft practices.
Chalcolithic Period IV showed a continuity in pottery and crafts but progressive stylistic changes. During this period, the region split into small and medium sized compact settlements connected by canals. Some of the settlements included blocks of houses with courtyards separated by small passageways; and the presence of large storage jars in rooms and courtyards.
Dentistry at Mehrgarh
A recent study at Mehrgarh showed that during Period III, people were using bead-making techniques to experiment with dentistry: tooth decay in humans is a direct outgrowth of a reliance on agriculture. Researchers examining burials in a cemetery at MR3 discovered drill holes on at least eleven molars. Light microscopy showed the holes were conical, cylindrical or trapezoidal in shape. A few had concentric rings showing drill bit marks, and a few had some evidence for decay. No filling material was noted, but tooth wear on the drill marks indicate that each of these individuals continued to live on after the drilling was completed.
Coppa and colleagues (2006) pointed out that only four of the eleven teeth contained clear evidence of decay associated with drilling; however, the drilled teeth are all molars located in the back of both lower and upper jaws, and thus are not likely to have been drilled for decorative purposes. Flint drill bits are a characteristic tool from Mehrgarh, mostly used with producing beads. The researchers conducted experiments and discovered that a flint drill bit attached to a bow-drill can produce similar holes in human enamel in under a minute: these modern experiments were not, of course, used on living humans.
The dental techniques have only been discovered on only 11 teeth out of a total of 3,880 examined from 225 individuals, so tooth-drilling was a rare occurrence, and, it appears to have been a short-lived experiment as well. Although the MR3 cemetery contains younger skeletal material (into the Chalcolithic), no evidence for tooth drilling has been found later than 4500 BC.
Later Periods at Mehrgarh
Later periods included craft activities such as flint knapping, tanning, and expanded bead production; and a significant level of metal-working, particularly copper. The site was occupied continuously until about 2600 BC, when it was abandoned, about the time when the Harappan periods of the Indus civilization began to flourish at Harappa, Mohenjo-Daro and Kot Diji, among other sites.
Mehrgarh was discovered and excavated by an international led by French archaeologist Jean-François Jarrige; the site was excavated continuously between 1974 and 1986 by the French Archaeological Mission in collaboration with the Department of Archaeology of Pakstan.
Sources
Coppa, A. "Early Neolithic tradition of dentistry." Nature 440, L. Bondioli, A. Cucina, et al., Nature, April 5, 2006.
Gangal K, Sarson GR, and Shukurov A. 2014. The Near-Eastern Roots of the Neolithic in South Asia. PLoS ONE 9(5):e95714.
Jarrige J-F. 1993. The Early Architectural Traditions of Greater Indus as Seen from Mehrgarh, Baluchistan. Studies in the History of Art 31:25-33.
Jarrige J-F, Jarrige C, Quivron G, Wengler L, and Sarmiento Castillo D. 2013. Mehrgarh. Pakistan: Editions de Boccard.Neolithic Period - Seasons 1997-2000
Khan A, and Lemmen C. 2013. Bricks and urbanism in the Indus Valley rise and decline. History and Philosophy of Physics (physicshist-ph) arXiv:1303.1426v1.
Lukacs JR. 1983. Human Dental Remains From Early Neolithic Levels at Mehrgarh, Baluchistan. Cu rrent Anthropology 24(3):390-392.
Moulherat C, Tengberg M, Haquet J-F, and Mille Bt. 2002. First Evidence of Cotton at Neolithic Mehrgarh, Pakistan: Analysis of Mineralized Fibres from a Copper Bead. Journal of Archaeological Science 29(12):1393-1401.
Possehl GL. 1990. Revolution in the Urban Revolution: The Emergence of Indus Urbanization. Annual Review of Anthropology 19:261-282.
Sellier P. 1989. Hypotheses and Estimators for the Demographic Interpretation of the Chalcolithic Population from Mehrgarh, Pakistan. East and West 39(1/4):11-42.
www.thoughtco.com
The Roots of the Chalcolithic Indus Civilization
Aceramic Neolithic
The earliest settled portion of Mehrgarh is found in an area called MR.3, in the northeast corner of the immense site. Mehrgarh was a small farming and pastoralist village between 7000-5500 BC, with mud brick houses and granaries. The early residents used local copper ore, basket containers lined with bitumen, and an array of bone tools.
Plant foods used during this period included domesticated and wild six-rowed barley, domestic einkorn and emmer wheat, and wild Indian jujube (Zizyphus spp) and date palms (Phoenix dactylifera). Sheep, goats, and cattle were herded at Mehrgarh beginning during this early period. Hunted animals include gazelle, swamp deer, nilgai, blackbuck onager, chital, water buffalo, wild pig and elephant.
The earliest residences at Mehrgarh were freestanding, multi-roomed rectangular houses built with long, cigar-shaped and mortared mudbricks: these structures are very similar to Prepottery Neolithic (PPN) hunter-gatherers in early 7th millennium Mesopotamia. Burials were placed in brick-lined tombs, accompanied by shell and turquoise beads. Even at this early date, the similarities of crafts, architecture, and agricultural and funerary practices indicate some sort of connection between Mehrgarh and Mesopotamia.
Neolithic Period II 5500 to 4800
By the sixth millennium, agriculture had become firmly established at Mehrgarh, based on mostly (~90 percent) locally domesticated barley but also wheat from the near east. The earliest pottery was made by sequential slab construction, and the site contained circular fire pits filled with burnt pebbles and large granaries, characteristics also of similarly dated Mesopotamian sites.
Buildings made of sun-dried brick were large and rectangular, symmetrically divided into small square or rectangular units. They were doorless and lack of residential remains, suggesting to researchers that at least some of they were storage facilities for grains or other commodities which were communally shared. Other buildings are standardized rooms surrounded by large open work spaces where craft-working activities took place, including the beginnings of the extensive bead-making characteristic of the Indus.
Chalcolithic Period III 4800 to 3500 and IV 3500 to 3250 BC
By the Chalcolithic Period III at Mehrgarh, the community, now well over 100 hectares, consisted of large spaces with groups of building divided into residences and storage units, but more elaborate, with foundations of pebbles embedded in clay. The bricks were made with molds, and along with fine painted wheel-thrown pottery, and a variety of agricultural and craft practices.
Chalcolithic Period IV showed a continuity in pottery and crafts but progressive stylistic changes. During this period, the region split into small and medium sized compact settlements connected by canals. Some of the settlements included blocks of houses with courtyards separated by small passageways; and the presence of large storage jars in rooms and courtyards.
Dentistry at Mehrgarh
A recent study at Mehrgarh showed that during Period III, people were using bead-making techniques to experiment with dentistry: tooth decay in humans is a direct outgrowth of a reliance on agriculture. Researchers examining burials in a cemetery at MR3 discovered drill holes on at least eleven molars. Light microscopy showed the holes were conical, cylindrical or trapezoidal in shape. A few had concentric rings showing drill bit marks, and a few had some evidence for decay. No filling material was noted, but tooth wear on the drill marks indicate that each of these individuals continued to live on after the drilling was completed.
Coppa and colleagues (2006) pointed out that only four of the eleven teeth contained clear evidence of decay associated with drilling; however, the drilled teeth are all molars located in the back of both lower and upper jaws, and thus are not likely to have been drilled for decorative purposes. Flint drill bits are a characteristic tool from Mehrgarh, mostly used with producing beads. The researchers conducted experiments and discovered that a flint drill bit attached to a bow-drill can produce similar holes in human enamel in under a minute: these modern experiments were not, of course, used on living humans.
The dental techniques have only been discovered on only 11 teeth out of a total of 3,880 examined from 225 individuals, so tooth-drilling was a rare occurrence, and, it appears to have been a short-lived experiment as well. Although the MR3 cemetery contains younger skeletal material (into the Chalcolithic), no evidence for tooth drilling has been found later than 4500 BC.
Later Periods at Mehrgarh
Later periods included craft activities such as flint knapping, tanning, and expanded bead production; and a significant level of metal-working, particularly copper. The site was occupied continuously until about 2600 BC, when it was abandoned, about the time when the Harappan periods of the Indus civilization began to flourish at Harappa, Mohenjo-Daro and Kot Diji, among other sites.
Mehrgarh was discovered and excavated by an international led by French archaeologist Jean-François Jarrige; the site was excavated continuously between 1974 and 1986 by the French Archaeological Mission in collaboration with the Department of Archaeology of Pakstan.
Sources
Coppa, A. "Early Neolithic tradition of dentistry." Nature 440, L. Bondioli, A. Cucina, et al., Nature, April 5, 2006.
Gangal K, Sarson GR, and Shukurov A. 2014. The Near-Eastern Roots of the Neolithic in South Asia. PLoS ONE 9(5):e95714.
Jarrige J-F. 1993. The Early Architectural Traditions of Greater Indus as Seen from Mehrgarh, Baluchistan. Studies in the History of Art 31:25-33.
Jarrige J-F, Jarrige C, Quivron G, Wengler L, and Sarmiento Castillo D. 2013. Mehrgarh. Pakistan: Editions de Boccard.Neolithic Period - Seasons 1997-2000
Khan A, and Lemmen C. 2013. Bricks and urbanism in the Indus Valley rise and decline. History and Philosophy of Physics (physicshist-ph) arXiv:1303.1426v1.
Lukacs JR. 1983. Human Dental Remains From Early Neolithic Levels at Mehrgarh, Baluchistan. Cu rrent Anthropology 24(3):390-392.
Moulherat C, Tengberg M, Haquet J-F, and Mille Bt. 2002. First Evidence of Cotton at Neolithic Mehrgarh, Pakistan: Analysis of Mineralized Fibres from a Copper Bead. Journal of Archaeological Science 29(12):1393-1401.
Possehl GL. 1990. Revolution in the Urban Revolution: The Emergence of Indus Urbanization. Annual Review of Anthropology 19:261-282.
Sellier P. 1989. Hypotheses and Estimators for the Demographic Interpretation of the Chalcolithic Population from Mehrgarh, Pakistan. East and West 39(1/4):11-42.
Mehrgarh: The Roots of the Indus Civilization in Pakistan
Mehrgarh is a Neolithic and Chalcolithic (7000 to 3200 BC) site in Pakistan and one of the earliest sites with evidence for farming in south Asia.
