Day 2 - On to Lothal

 22nd February 2025

I got an early start to the morning, making myself a cup of Sleepy Owl coffee (trying it for the first time!), in the nice spacious Hyatt room.  Peeping out, the main Ashram Road that our room overlooked, was still asleep.  We checked out at 8 in the morning after a hearty Hyatt breakfast.  

Thanks to Sheila's tip - we caught views of the Sabarmati from our 12th floor corridor.  We would come back a week later and once again catch the concrete waterfront beautification from the ashram.  Is this the only way to maintain a waterfront, I mused?

Many international cities fill up their riverfronts with concrete walkways - I have seen them in Chicago, New York, Singapore and Abu Dhabi - so is this the only "model" we can adopt?  The Sabarmati if I remember right, is not a perennial, and now it holds Narmada water in the stretch in downtown Ahmedabad and like every other Indian river from the Adyar in Chennai to the Yamuna in Delhi and The Hooghly in Kolkata is dying a daily death choked with effluents and sewage.  

Better to use the huge monies to stop the pollutants rather than pour concrete on riverfronts one would think, but not so for most Corporations, but who's asking me?! 😜

This rather interesting mural representation of Ahmedabad at the Hyatt lobby

Anyways, back to the present and and after meeting Pankaj from the Carnelian team and a a little debrief on the Indus Valley civilisation by Meera in the very nice Chai room, we boarded our large bus - our companion for the next five days!     

We motored down NH4, past drying mustard fields, drongos and kingfishers on the wires, egrets flying past and reached Lothal around 11 in the morning.  Just before we turned off on to the Bagodara Road, Aravind very magically produced a box of sweets, which went up and down the bus.  On alighting, even more magically, little chai cups and chai also appeared!  We stood around in the parking lot as Meera showed us the excavated town plan of Lothal.

Upon returning, I have done some reading "homework" on Lothal - a great resource is harappa.com - and the more I read, the more fascinated I am about the whole civilisation, how many sites have since been discovered - more than 2,000 it seems, their seals and their great baths, their obsession with water storage and drainage, and a seeming lack of a reigning deity or "God" - and a very flat organisation structure (to use modern parlance).

Meera was quite appalled with me when I rather offhandedly mentioned that after all these years we still know only what was in my textbook of the seventies - my pet grouse is the undeciphered language - and she did point out how much more we know, now.  For example, we know now that the Harappans are possibly the Meluhhans mentioned in the Mesopotamian texts - we have two names as well - Samar and Nanaza - please see this link - https://www.harappa.com/blog/only-known-meluhan-personal-names-samar-and-nanaza.

Lothat was rediscovered way back in 1954, by the team led by Dr S R Rao - as we looked hard and with focus for more IVC sites in India - and in the first season of excavation itself they struck gold - found the typical Indus weights, seals, pottery, beads etc etc!  We didn't see the artefacts as they are all removed. There used to be a site museum I believe but it is closed and everyone is waiting for some Mega museum to come up - maritime museum is in the works. But it is a bit of a shame that there is no on site museum.

The Lothal settlement is dated from 2500-1900 BC and seem to be in two periods of settlement - The Harappans arrive around 2400 BC and there is a small village with mud fortifications.  Urban living begins and continues and thrives until 1900 BC, so that is about 500 years.  (My mind goes into a spin - Chennai/Madras is younger than that!). After this until 1600 BC, it seems to go into decline and becomes rural again and then just vanishes. Where did they go?

Meera explained the different parts that we were going to see - the dockyard, upper town,  Acropolis... and so in we went.

It was pretty warm in the sun but cool under the trees, with the breeze blowing. It was a beautiful setting!  I loved the meswak trees all around and the large flocks of noisy rosy starlings in the mesquite bushes. They undertook sorties along with a bunch of pelicans and there were a lot of bee eaters too! 

But as  we stood at the dockyard, it was the two grey wagtails at the water's edge that distracted me from what Meera and Pankaj were saying.

Sparrows were hopping around in the shade, and the white cheeked bulbuls called from the meswak trees.

In my usual distracted fashion - I decided to start a bird list for Lothal too.  And here is my Ebird list for Lothal.  

The Dockyard!

It is the most important and most intact structure at Lothal.  Pankaj looked quite surprised to see it brimming with water, the last time they were here it was bone dry, and the guard said this was all rain/fresh water.  It looked beautiful - blue skies, light winds, and the rippling clean waters.

This dockyard - "is a trapezoid baked-brick enclosure measuring on an average 214x36m and running along practically the whole length of the east city wall, it was used as dock for ships sailing during high tide. There was also a wooden gate in the southern wall to regulate and maintain the water level inside the dockyard."  (From the boards on site).

Of course I had  so many questions - how did they figure this was a dockyard and not a reservoir?  What is a dockyard doing stuck here, in land and are those the original bricks??? (The original bricks question kept getting repeated, I have to tell you)

Meera and Pankaj pointed out the gap in the wall, where a sluice gate would have been held, and also spoke about paleo water channels that have been propounded to have surrounded Lothal, with the Gulf being much closer as also the Sabarmati following a different course.

Imagine that!  Please click on this link below to read more.

A Bronze Age Inland Water Network and Its Role in the Maritime Trade Network of the Harappan (Indus) Civilization

Sabarmati and its connection with the Harappan port Lothal and the Nal corridor: A study using multi-sensor data, cloud-computing and multi-platforms

These papers, authored by Ekta Gupta, V N Prabhakar and Vikrant Jain put forth the argument that the water landscape 4,000 years ago was quite different - the Sabarmati flowed closer to and just west of Lothal, there were many channels and creeks with fresh water, and the Gulf of Khambat was also more inland.  I was fascinated by the theory of the Nal corridor, connecting LRK and the Gulf of Khambat. 

The Warehouse

Meera, Pankaj and Aravind had a hard time moving us along in a cohesive group, as the 20 of us moved in twenty directions (well almost), and everyone had the same questions with a lag.  Exasperated Lokesh tried to bring some sense of "let's move as a group", but there was so much to see and explore!!

Anyway, in this rag tag fashion we moved to the "Warehouse" mound.  "There were 64 cubical mud-brick blocks, each measures 3.6m square on plan and 1 m high separated from each other by 1 m wide passage."  (From the on-site board).  Currently, only 12 can be seen.  Meera brought it to life for us, asking us to imagine this large warehouse foundation, with possibly a wooden structure overhead, where the main import and export activities took place.

The corner of this warehouse is where a whole stash of burnt sealings were found by the SR Rao team!  70 of them - imagine!  Lothal site is known for its sealings.  (Source of the screenshot:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12zuFb-0Fy8)

I watched this video - most of it went over my head - it is a bit technical and filled with archaeology-speak - with Dennys Frenez attempting to show what these sealing were used for, and what could have been the undersurface on which they were applied!  The stuff that will put Sherlock Holmes to shame. (Source of the screenshot:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12zuFb-0Fy8) 

Seal-based Administrative Technology and Procedures: The Lothal Clay Seal Archive 

S. R. Rao, 'The fact that all terracotta sealings bear impressions of seals other than those found at Lothal establishes that the goods kept sealed here were imported' S. R. Rao, Lothal: A Harappan Port Town (1955-62), Vol. 1(New Delhi: Archaeological Survey of India, 1985), p. 114

Was Lothal a trading outpost, an import/export clearing house?  The Unicorn seals were the most common at Lothal.  There were sealings with elephants, but no matching seals!

Seal vs sealing - 

Seals are objects with text deeply engraved on them in intaglio or reverse, while sealings are positive impressions in relief by seals or special moulds on impressible material like clay, faience or metal.  

The sealings had the impressions on one side, and the other bore the impressions of the material underneath - pottery or bag or wood.  I read articles showing the connection to excavation sites in Oman - Ras al-Hadd and Ras al Jinz.  Global trade was well and active 4000 years ago, it would seem.

The Acropolis

We then climbed a bit to what is referred to as the Acropolis, which has what seems like large homes on high platforms.

 The main residence seemed to have elaborate drainage system, 

a covered drain, 

and even a underground were that seemed to go all the way down and drain at the dockyard!

Was this the kitchen with the cooking stove?  

The ASI has reconstructed and repaired some of the structures to give us an idea, so it is difficult to figure what is original 4000 years old and what I more recent, and the Carnelian team were very patient answering our constant queries on this!

These pottery bits were from n antique land - of that we were sure.  A little goosebump moment as I thought of some Meluhhan who may have carried water in this for cooking, or to have a bath.

Was she wearing those bangles that seem to have been made here.  What was their diet?  They were meat eaters from the evidence of bones around - and supposedly the Lothal area they grew rice.  Millets, rice, coriander, brinjal...age old crops.

But where exactly were these agricultural fields?  They were considered rural Lothal is it?  Coming in to the city to feed this industrial town of workers?

And there were peacocks and elephants, pig and cattle and even pet dogs.  No horses as yet.  But what is this fascination for the unicorn?  I need to look for the lion and tiger seals.  

At the far end was the cemetery.  We did not go there - since it is all covered up, and there is nothing to see.  But there were some 21 graves and supposedly 19 bodies.  Which is now 18.  I  wondered about the missing skeleton for a day or so.  But on a more serious note, these graves and skeletons provide important and fascinating clues on the Harappans of Lothal.  They seem to have migrated in and then migrated out!

The Bead factory

It was around noon now as we wandered though the Lower Town and the bead factory.  The sun was directly overhead, and I was glad that I had carried some drinking water.  This area did not have any trees to hide under, and so we hurried through.

This little yellow seemed to be enjoying the sun.  

"A mud-brick structure of 11 rooms with a central courtyard, served as a bead factory. Two jars containing hundred carnelian beads in various stages of manufacture were found embedded in the working platform.   In proximity to the bead factory is a double-chambered circular kiln with a stoke-hole (for supply of fuel).  Small bowls containing saw dust and pebbles of agate, carnelian etc. were placed on the flues of the kiln for heating the stones for easy removal of the cortex. Two big jars made of mud containing more than 600 beads of various stages found inside the structure proves that the lapidaries worked here" - From the board on site

And so  it seemed quite symbolic that we pick up beads from this great bead making site of the Harappans.

That little bit in the middle is Carnelian I was told.

It was lunch time, when we headed out of Lothal - and trundled along to patan and the Sun temple.