Explorations in Sind

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Preface The epoch-making discoveries at Mohenjo-Daro in the Larkana District of Sind have directed the attention of archaeologists all over the. World to this comparatively unknown corner of India. The history of her civilization has been carried back at a stretch to at least the fourth millennium B.C., an antiquity that now entitles her for the first time to enter into partnership with Egypt, Persia and Mesopotamia, and those centres of early culture that sprang up in Crete and other islands of the Mediterranean. But Mohenjo-Daro was not the only site of this period in the Indus valley. The chalcolithic civilization which it represents must have spread over a wide area, as proved by similar discoveries already made at Harappan in the Montgomery District of the Punjab, at a distance of about four hundred miles from Mohenjo-Daro. In Sind itself there must have been many more stations wedded to this culture, and indeed occasional reports about the existence of earthen mounds in various localities outside Mohenjo-Daro raised hopes for fresh discoveries.

The need for a systematic survey of the Indus valley and its border lands was keenly felt by the Indian Archaeological Department, almost from the very beginning of its work at Mohenjo7daro. In 1925-26, at the suggestion of Sir John Marshall, the then Director General of Archaeology in India, Mr. Hargreaves of the Archaeological Department conducted excavations at Nal in the Kalat State of Baluchistan and explored a few other sites in its vicinity; and later, in 1926-27 and 1927-28, a survey of Northern and Southern Baluchistan was carried out by Sir Aurel Stein. These operations yielded splendid results,2 showing the wide diffusion of the ' Indus Civilization ' and at the same time bringing to light traces of allied cultures which could probably be affiliated, with certain reservations, to the Persian zone. But much spade-work was needed in the Indus valley itself without which a study of these materials would remain partial and incomplete. After his discovery of Mohenjo-Daro in 1922, the late R. D. Banerjee had collected, so far as he could, information about other probable sites in Sind, and supplied a list of them to the Archaeological Department. But very likely he had no opportunity of examining any of these sites himself.

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