About 7,000 years ago, on the banks of Ghaggar river in northern India, the protohistoric settlements evolved from being humble farming communities to urban, trading seafaring civilisation. This change happened gradually over the course of thousands of years. These settlers enjoyed the resources in the region and used the river both as a source of livelihood and a means of transportation.
Despite the dispersal of these early urban settlers, the area around Ghaggar was not abandoned for long. Painted Grey Ware users re-occupied the region, which is now a completely changed landscape, after a few hundred years. Then came the historical period powers such as Kushanas. In short, the historicity of the region, despite the disappearance of the Ghaggar—later recognised as Saraswati—offered an elaborate and much-celebrated picture of human survival in the region.
Today, these settlements are present in the form of archaeological mounds, with only a handful of sites having been excavated. The rest were left, some protected and others unprotected, to die. Where the previous column was an attempt to alarm people and authorities alike, here is a case of a significant site that will remain in the dusty pages of archaeological reports in years to come.
Tarkhanwala Dera is located on the right bank of Ghaggar in Anupgarh tehsil of Sri Ganganagar district in Rajasthan. It was strategically located along the trade route toward Harappan in the north and Mohenjo-daro in the west. Today the site remains destroyed, despite being protected by the central government.
Tarkhanwala Dera in 1950s
Amalananda Ghosh, the first Director General of independent India’s Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), undertook an extensive survey in the lower Ghaggar area between 1950 to 1952. He and his team, during the course of the survey, excavated multiple exploratory trenches at sites such as Tarkhanwala Dera and Chak 86 GB to find answers to multiple pressing research questions at the time. One such query was around the status of ancient Bronze Age culture in the region and its connection with the succeeding archaeological cultures like the Painted Grey Ware.
In the early 1950s, the notion of the Dark Ages and a considerable gap in the chronology of India’s past was keeping historians and archaeologists on their toes. That is why Ghosh decided to simultaneously excavate Tarkhanwala Dera and Chak 86 GB, which are separated by a tar road. The former is a Harappan site, while the latter is exclusively Painted Grey Ware.
Ghosh’s investigation brought to light the distinctiveness of these two cultures in the region. Unlike sites such as Bhagwanpura in Haryana where there is an overlap between Late Harappan and Painted Grey Ware culture, there was no such cultural overlap at Tarkhanwala Dera and Chak 86 GB. Both sites could not be linked together. At Tarkhanwala Dera, Ghosh found Harappan pottery, artefacts, structures, including a brick platform, which he linked to human cremations. However, subsequent excavations failed to uncover evidence supporting Ghosh’s claims. At Chak 86 GB, he found gray ware and associated artefacts.
The study by Ghosh and his team clarified that in the lower Ghaggar basin, no Harappan site was directly succeeded by later cultures. Instead, there seems to be a considerable gap in the chronology of the two archaeological cultures. Such unique and important pieces of information helped in understanding the varied nature of both Harappan settlements in the entire Ghaggar basin. Additionally, it highlights the uniqueness of Painted Grey Ware sites, which are characterised by a single archaeological culture.
A small-scale excavation in the 1950s put this site on the map, but it wasn’t until 2003 that the ASI excavated it.
Also read: First we lost Saraswati River. Now we are losing archaeological sites along Ghaggar too
A treasure trove for archaeologist
In 2003-2004, PK Trivedi of ASI, along with his team, excavated 11 trenches at the site, which was relatively intact at the time. A modern brick kiln was observed on much of the site, which harmed the mound to a large extent. Rajasthan state highway on the other side also caused considerable damage. Despite these challenges, the ASI team began excavations, leading to the discovery of a single-phase Mature Harappan settlement (c.2600-1900 BCE), a rarity in archaeology.
The mound would have been measured around 4 hectares in size with a cultural deposit of 4 metres. Unlike many Harappan sites such as Dholavira or Banawali, the excavators didn’t find any evidence of streets or gateways at Tarkhanwala Dera. However, structural evidence pointed toward a modest habitation, with mud-brick structures featuring mud floors and walls being uncovered.
Two pyriform potter’s kilns lined with a single course of sun-dried bricks, and two fire altars lined with mud bricks filled with charcoal, ash, terracotta cakes and potsherds, represent some of the most important evidence uncovered during this excavation. Similar potter’s kiln has been discovered in neighbouring Harappan sites such as Baror and Binjor-4MSR. This concrete evidence suggests a modest yet fully sophisticated settlement. It also hints at the possible existence of a workshop area, a hypothesis that further excavation could justify.
However, the total of 4-metre deposit, lacking any structural phase indicating a change within the settlement, interestingly suggests that it was a temporary and a much later settlement. Kotla Badali in Gujarat is another site offering a thin deposit but is extremely crucial in understanding the civilisation beyond large and celebrated sites. Though the calibrated dates from the site are much later than the Mature Harappan period, the context and material remains are markers of the classical/ Mature Harappan period.
Lost forever
Although Ghosh mentioned the threat to Tarkhanwala Dera and its sorry state in his writings from the explorations in the 1950s, the situation had deteriorated by the time it was excavated in 2003. The continuous encroachment of the brick kiln has completely consumed the site. Today, it has vanished from the spot, and traces of this settlement, which could have unlocked the door to the unknown, are lost.
In 2014, during my first visit to the site, I was baffled by the lack of protection. There was still a small portion of the site intact on the edge of the brick kiln. However, by February 2024, all I could find was the expanded brick kiln; the landscape had changed. Standing on the tar road, facing the spot where the site once stood, I could only imagine how, from 1950 to 2003 and now to 2024, the remnants of the past had become a chapter in the history books. Only the pages of archival records and the extensively documented ASI report remain, thanks to the archaeologists who salvaged whatever they could.
Nevertheless, one can’t stop thinking about how this happened—how could we lose an important site, especially when it was protected by the government?
Disha Ahluwalia is an archaeologist and junior research fellow at the Indian Council Of Historical Research. She tweets @ahluwaliadisha. Views are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)