Question

what fresh information has been contributed by the excavation during the last fifty years about the process involved in urbanisation?​

Answer 1

Answer:

The urban culture of the Bronze Age found in Harappa in Pakistani Punjab was a path-breaking discovery.

In 1853, A. Cunningham, the British engineer who became a great excavator and explorer, noticed a Harappan seal.

Though the seal showed a bull and six written letters, he did not realize its significance. Much later, in 1921, the potentiality of the site of Harappa was appreciated when an Indian archeologist, Daya Ram Sahni, started excavating it.

At about the same time, R.D. Banerjee, a historian, excavated the site of Mohenjo-daro in Sindh. Both discovered pottery and other antiquities indicative of a developed civilization.

Large-scale excavations were carried out at Mohenjo-daro under the general supervision of Marshall in 1931. Mackay excavated the same site in 1938. Vats excavated at Harappa in 1940. In 1946 Mortimer Wheeler excavated Harappa, and the excavation of the pre-Independence and pre-Partition period brought to light important antiquities of the Harappan culture at various sites where bronze was used.

In the post-Independence period, archaeologists from both India and Pakistan excavated the Harappan and connected sites. Suraj Bhan, M.K. Dhavalikar, J.P. Joshi, B.B. Lai, S.R. Rao, B.K. Thapar, R.S. Bisht, and others worked in Gujarat, Harayana, and Rajasthan.

In Pakistan, Kot Diji in the central Indus Valley was excavated by F.A. Khan, and great attention was paid to the Hakra and pre-Hakra cultures by M.R. Mughal. A.H. Dani excavated the Gandhara graves in the North- West Frontier Province of Pakistan. American, British, French, and Italian archaeologists also worked at several sites including Harappa.Now we have a wealth of Harappan material, though excavations and explorations are still in progress. All scholars agree on the urban character of the Harappan culture, but opinions differ on the role of the Sarasvati identified with the Hakra—Ghaggar river and also on the identity of the people who created this culture.

The Indus or the Harappan culture is older than the Chalcolithic cultures that have-been examined earlier, but as a bronze-using culture it is far more developed than the latter. It developed in the north-western part of the Indian subcontinent. It is called Harappan because this civilization was discovered first in 1921 at the modern site of Harappa situated in the province of Punjab in Pakistan.

Many sites in Sindh formed the central zone of pre-Harappan culture. This culture developed and matured into an urban civilization that developed in Sindh and Punjab. The central zone of this mature Harappan culture lay in Sindh and Punjab, principally in the Indus Valley. From there it spread southwards and eastwards. In this way, the Harappan culture covered parts of Punjab, Haryana, Sindh, Baluchistan, Gujarat, Rajasthan, and the fringes of western UP. It extended from the Siwaliks in the north to the Arabian Sea in the south, and from the Makran coast of Baluchistan in the west to Meerut in the north-east.

The area formed a triangle and accounted for about 1,299,600 sq. km which is a larger area than that of Pakistan, and certainly larger than ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. No other culture zone in the third and second millennia BC in the world was as widespread as the Harappan. Nearly 2800 Harappan sites have so far been identified in the subcontinent.

Answer 2

With new evidence and fresh insights into the knowledge that has historically been identified over the past 50 years, some phases of economic life of early India can now be tracked.

Explanation:

• Named for its distinct urban culture, the Harappan civilization (ca. 2500-1750 BC) represents the first step of India's urban planning. It has a thriving agrarian economy, a wide range of workmanship, including the production of copper and bronze, extensive trade both inside and with the Oman peninsula, Bahrain and the Sumerian civilization. It is characterized by a prosperous agricultural economy.
• A number of magnificent cities were the most extraordinary characteristic of this civilization. Although urban development – and the specialization areas of artistic craft fed by cities of Harappa – have declined, the Chalcolithic and early iron regions show that varieties of handicrafts supplemented agricultural produce and extensive networks of exchange have been established.
• Trade and urbanism in the whole of the subcontinent had seen exponential development. The shifts in the non-agri-business and urban center growth were primarily experienced during the Buddha era in  the Ganga valley.