Mehrgarh

Mehrgarh

مہرگڑھ مهرګړ
Shown within Pakistan
Alternate name	Mehrgahr, Merhgarh, Merhgahr
Location	Dhadar, Balochistan, Pakistan
Coordinates
History
Founded	Approximately 7000 BC
Abandoned	Approximately 2600 BC
Periods	Neolithic
Site notes
Excavation dates	1974–1986, 1997–2000
Archaeologists	Jean-François Jarrige, Catherine Jarrige

Mehrgarh (Balochi: Mehrgaŕh; Pashto: مهرګړ‎; Urdu: مہرگڑھ‎;), sometimes anglicized as Mehergarh or Mehrgar, is one of the most important Neolithic (7000 BC to c. 2500 BC) sites in archaeology. Located near the capital of the Kachi District in Pakistan, it lies on the Kacchi Plain of Balochistan. It is one of the earliest sites with evidence of farming and herding in South Asia.

Map of Pakistan showing Mehrgarh in relation to the cities of Quetta, Kalat, and Sibi and the Kachi Plain of Balochistan.

Mehrgarh is located near the Bolan Pass, to the west of the Indus River valley and between the Pakistani cities of Quetta, Kalat and Sibi. The site was discovered in 1974 by an archaeological team led by French archaeologists Jean-François Jarrige and Catherine Jarrige, and was excavated continuously between 1974 and 1986, and again from 1997 to 2000. The earliest settlement at Mehrgarh, in the northeast corner of the 495-acre (2.00 km²) site, was a small farming village that has been dated to between 6500 BC to 5500 BC. The whole area covers a number of successive settlements. Archaeological material has been found in six mounds, and about 32,000 artifacts have been collected.

Lifestyle and technology

Early Mehrgarh residents lived in mud brick houses, stored their grain in granaries, fashioned tools with local copper ore, and lined their large basket containers with bitumen. They cultivated six-row barley, einkorn and emmer wheat, jujubes and dates, and herded sheep, goats and cattle. Residents of the later period (5500 BC to 2600 BC) put much effort into crafts, including flint knapping, tanning, bead production, and metal working. Mehrgarh is probably the earliest known center of agriculture in South Asia.

Archaeological significance

Mehrgarh is now seen as a precursor to the Indus Valley Civilization. "Discoveries at Mehrgarh changed the entire concept of the Indus civilization," according to Ahmad Hasan Dani, professor emeritus of archaeology at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, "There we have the whole sequence, right from the beginning of settled village life."

Periods of occupation

Archaeologists divide the occupation at the site into several periods.

Mehrgarh Period I

The Mehrgarh Period I (7000 BC-5500 BC) was Neolithic and aceramic, without the use of pottery. The earliest farming in the area was developed by semi-nomadic people using plants such as wheat and barley and animals such as sheep, goats and cattle. The settlement was established with simple mud buildings and most of them had four internal subdivisions. Numerous burials have been found, many with elaborate goods such as baskets, stone and bone tools, beads, bangles, pendants and occasionally animal sacrifices, with more goods left with burials of males. Ornaments of sea shell, limestone, turquoise, lapis lazuli and sandstone have been found, along with simple figurines of women and animals. Sea shells from far sea shore and lapis lazuli found as far away as present-day Badakshan, Afghanistan shows good contact with those areas. A single ground stone axe was discovered in a burial, and several more were obtained from the surface. These ground stone axes are the earliest to come from a stratified context in the South Asia. Periods I, II and III are contemporaneous with another site called Kili Gul Mohammed.

In 2001, archaeologists studying the remains of two men from Mehrgarh made the discovery that the people of the Indus Valley Civilization had knowledge of proto-dentistry from the early Harappan periods. In April 2006, it was announced in the scientific journal Nature that the oldest (and first early Neolithic) evidence for the drilling of human teeth in vivo (i.e. in a living person) was found in Mehrgarh. According to the authors, their discoveries point to a tradition of proto-dentistry in the early farming cultures of that region. "Here we describe eleven drilled molar crowns from nine adults discovered in a Neolithic graveyard in Pakistan that dates from 7,500 to 9,000 years ago. These findings provide evidence for a long tradition of a type of proto-dentistry in an early farming culture."

Mehrgarh Period II and Period III

The Mehrgarh Period II (5500 BC–4800 BC) and Merhgarh Period III (4800 BC–3500 BC) were ceramic Neolithic, using pottery, and later chalcolithic. Period II is at site MR4 and Period III is at MR2. Much evidence of manufacturing activity has been found and more advanced techniques were used. Glazed faience beads were produced and terracotta figurines became more detailed. Figurines of females were decorated with paint and had diverse hairstyles and ornaments. Two flexed burials were found in Period II with a red ochre cover on the body. The amount of burial goods decreased over time, becoming limited to ornaments and with more goods left with burials of females. The first button seals were produced from terracotta and bone and had geometric designs. Technologies included stone and copper drills, updraft kilns, large pit kilns and copper melting crucibles. There is further evidence of long-distance trade in Period II: important as an indication of this is the discovery of several beads of lapis lazuli, once again from Badakshan. Mehrgarh Periods II and III are also contemporaneous with an expansion of the settled populations of the borderlands at the western edge of South Asia, including the establishment of settlements like Rana Ghundai, Sheri Khan Tarakai, Sarai Kala, Jalilpur and Ghaligai.

The Neolithic
↑ Mesolithic
Fertile Crescent Heavy Neolithic Shepherd Neolithic Trihedral Neolithic Pre-Pottery (A, B) Qaraoun culture Tahunian culture Yarmukian Culture Halaf culture Halaf-Ubaid Transitional period Ubaid culture Byblos Jericho Tell Aswad Çatalhöyük Jarmo Europe Boian culture Butmir culture Cernavodă culture Coțofeni culture Cucuteni-Trypillian culture Dudeşti culture Gorneşti culture Gumelniţa–Karanovo culture Hamangia culture Linear Pottery culture Malta Temples Petreşti culture Sesklo culture Tisza culture Tiszapolgár culture Usatovo culture Varna culture Vinča culture Vučedol culture Neolithic Transylvania Neolithic Southeastern Europe China Peiligang culture Pengtoushan culture Beixin culture Cishan culture Dadiwan culture Houli culture Xinglongwa culture Xinle culture Zhaobaogou culture Hemudu culture Daxi culture Majiabang culture Yangshao culture Hongshan culture Dawenkou culture Songze culture Liangzhu culture Majiayao culture Qujialing culture Longshan culture Baodun culture Shijiahe culture Yueshi culture Tibet South Asia Mehrgarh
farming, animal husbandry pottery, metallurgy, wheel circular ditches, henges, megaliths Neolithic religion
↓ Chalcolithic

Mehrgarh Periods IV, V and VI

A figurine from Mehrgarh, similar to the Venus figurines

Period IV was 3500 to 3250 BC. Period V from 3250 to 3000 BC and period VI was around 3000 BC. The site containing Periods IV to VII is designated as MR1.

Mehrgarh Period VII

Somewhere between 2600 BC and 2000 BC, the city seems to have been largely abandoned in favor of the new nearby settlement of Nausharo when the Indus Valley Civilization was in its middle stages of development.

Mehrgarh Period VIII

The last period is found at the Sibri cemetery, about 8 kilometers from Mehrgarh.

Artifacts

Human figurines

The oldest ceramic figurines in South Asia were found at Mehrgarh. They occur in all phases of the settlement and were prevalent even before pottery appears. The earliest figurines are quite simple and do not show intricate features. However, they grow in sophistication with time and by 4000 BC begin to show their characteristic hairstyles and typical prominent breasts. All the figurines up to this period were female. Male figurines appear only from period VII and gradually become more numerous. Many of the female figurines are holding babies, and were interpreted as depictions of the "mother goddess". However, due to some difficulties in conclusively identifying these figurines with the "mother goddess", some scholars prefer using the term "female figurines with likely cultic significance".

Pottery

Evidence of pottery begins from Period II. In period III, the finds becomes much more abundant as the potter's wheel is introduced, and they show more intricate designs and also animal motifs. The characteristic female figurines appear beginning in Period IV and the finds show more intricate designs and sophistication. Pipal leaf designs are used in decoration from Period VI. Some sophisticated firing techniques were used from Period VI and VII and an area reserved for the pottery industry has been found at mound MRI. However, by Period VIII, the quality and intricacy of designs seems to have suffered due to mass production, and due to a growing interest in bronze and copper vessels.

Burials

There are two types of burials in the Mehrgarh site. There were individual burials where a single individual was enclosed in narrow mud walls and collective burials with thin mud brick walls within which skeletons of six different individuals were discovered. The bodies in the collective burials were kept in a flexed position and were laid east to west. Child bones were found in large jars or urn burials (4000~3300 BC).

Metallurgy

Metal finds have dated as early as Period IIB, with a few copper items.

Dental morphology

The dental pattern of the neolithic Period I Mehrgarh inhabitants contrasts strongly with the European dental complex, and might represent the western margin of the Southeast Asian dental pattern known as Sundadont. Their dental morphology associates them with a distinctively Asian gene pool and shows no strong morphological relationships to known neolithic populations of West Asia. There are still, in fact, Southeast Asian genetic markers and languages present in the Indian subcontinent today that researchers have deemed to be intrusive.

See also

• Indus Valley Civilization and the list of Indus Valley Civilization sites
• List of inventions and discoveries of the Indus Valley Civilization
• Hydraulic engineering of the Indus Valley Civilization
• Bhirrana
• Mundigak — archaeological site in Kandahar Province
• Hadda — archaeological site in Nangarhar Province
• Surkh Kotal — archaeological site in Baghlan Province
• Mes Aynak — archaeological site in Logar Province
• Sheri Khan Tarakai — archaeological site in Bannu
• Mohenjo-daro — archaeological site in Sindh
• Harappa — archaeological site in Punjab
• Bolan Pass
• Indus Valley Civilization
• Nausharo
• Pirak
• Quetta
• List of Stone Age art

Further reading

• Avari, Burjor, India: The Ancient Past: A history of the Indian sub-continent from c. 7000 BC to AD 1200, Routledge.
• Singh, Upinder, A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India: From the Stone Age to the 12th century, Dorling Kindersley, 2008, ISBN 978-81-317-1120-0
• Lallanji Gopal, V. C. Srivastava, History of Agriculture in India, up to c. 1200 AD.
• Jarrige, Jean-Franois, Mehrgarh Neolithic
• Jarrige, C, J. F. Jarrige, R. H. Meadow, G. Quivron, eds (1995/6), Mehrgarh Field Reports 1974-85: From Neolithic times to the Indus Civilization.
• Jarrige J. F., Lechevallier M., Les fouilles de Mehrgarh, Pakistan : problèmes chronologiques [Excavations at Mehrgarh, Pakistan: chronological problems] (French).
• Lechevallier M., L'Industrie lithique de Mehrgarh (Pakistan) [The Lithic industry of Mehrgarh (Pakistan)] (French).
• Lukacs, J. R., Dental Morphology and Odontometrics of Early Agriculturalists from Neolithic Mehrgarh, Pakistan.
• Santoni, Marielle, Sibri and the South Cemetery of Mehrgarh: Third Millennium Connections between the Northern Kachi Plain (Pakistan) and Central Asia
• Barthelemy De Saizieu B., Le Cimetière néolithique de Mehrgarh (Balouchistan pakistanais) : apport de l'analyse factorielle [The Neolithic cemetery of Mehrgarh (Balochistan Pakistan): Contribution of a factor analysis] (French).

External links

• Archaeological Site of Mehrgarh, UNESCO
• Mehrgarh Neolithic by Jean-François Jarrige