Nausharo, Pirak and the ancient settlements of Kachi

Last Sunday we stopped at the mounds of Mehrgarh, where farming began in the subcontinent nine thousand years ago. But Mehrgarh was not alone. In the same Kachi plain, near the mouth of the Bolan Pass, there are two more mounds that carry the story forward: Nausharo and Pirak. One tells us how the village of Mehrgarh became a city of the great Indus Valley Civilisation. The other tells us how the people of Kachi carried on living after that civilisation declined.

A route that joined the world

The American archaeologist Jonathan Mark Kenoyer writes that the Bolan river cuts through the mountains of Balochistan to form the pass that links the Quetta valley and central Balochistan with the Kachi plain. Mehrgarh, Nausharo and Pirak lie in the Kachi plain at the foot of this pass. According to UNESCO’s "History of Civilizations of Central Asia", the site is on one of the main routes linking the Central Asian plateau with the plains of the Indus Valley. Kenoyer also reminds us that the Kachi plain, now part of Balochistan, is geographically a small extension of the Indus Valley itself.

The long work of the French mission

The excavation of these mounds in Kachi was the long work of a single body. It was the French "Mission archéologique de l’Indus" (Mission archéologique de l'Indus), at one time headed by Jean-Marie Casal. The mission dug at Pirak from 1968 to 1974, where the French archaeologists Jean-François and Catherine Jarrige worked with Casal, and then at Mehrgarh, Sibri and Nausharo from 1974. According to Asko Parpola and Jagat Pati Joshi, these excavations revealed an unbroken sequence in the Kachi plain, from the early seventh millennium BC to the middle of the first millennium BC.

Nausharo: heir to Mehrgarh

Nausharo lies about six kilometres south of Mehrgarh. According to Jarrige, it is the only major known Harappan site in North Kachi, and the mission began digging there in the 1980s. According to Kenoyer, the high northern part of the mound is made up of the old layers called Nausharo Period I (roughly 3000 to 2500 BC), whose material is like that of the late part of Mehrgarh Period VII. Jarrige himself describes one phase of Nausharo Period I as contemporary with the last phase of Mehrgarh VII. So when the settlement at Mehrgarh was coming to an end, between about 2600 and 2500 BC, Nausharo was emerging as the main town of the area.

Kenoyer says that shortly before 2500 BC a large area at the top of the mound was destroyed by fire. Roofs and walls collapsed and buried the houses, with all their contents, just as they were. The fire, as it were, froze the moment. Here there is also continuity in pottery, tools and construction from the Early Harappan to the Mature Harappan period. In the words of Joshi and Parpola, these excavations in Kachi helped us understand that the Indus Valley Civilisation emerged, step by step, from the older cultures of the Indo-Iranian borderlands.

A city on the map of the Indus Valley

According to Kenoyer, the last part of Period I, called ID, dates to about 2600 to 2500 BC, and scholars regard it as a transitional phase between the Early and Mature Harappan periods. Nausharo Periods II and III, from about 2500 to 2100 BC, then present the picture of a proper Harappan city: planned blocks of houses, a bathing area in every house, and brick-lined drains in the streets. Jarrige puts the Indus Valley Civilisation at about 2500 to 1800 BC.

The potters of Nausharo are part of this story too. According to Kenoyer, the only craft found here so far is pottery-making. In Periods II and III it was a household occupation: kilns were built in house courtyards, and potters’ tools and unfired pots were found in adjoining rooms.

The last period and new ties

According to a recent study, the layers of Nausharo’s fourth and last period, which belong to the third phase of the Indus civilisation (about 2100 to 1900 BC), contain, along with Harappan antiquities, some pots belonging to the "Oxus" or Bactrian civilisation of Central Asia. Jarrige writes that the material from the southern cemetery at Mehrgarh (Period VIII) and from the nearby settlement of Sibri also closely resembles finds from Afghanistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. In Jarrige’s view, from about 2200 to 1900 BC two groups with very different cultural backgrounds lived side by side, apparently peacefully, on the western border of the Indus Valley.

Pirak: horses, camels and rice

The story does not end here. About 20 kilometres east of Mehrgarh and Nausharo, near Sibi, lies the mound of Pirak. The French mission dug here from 1968 to 1974. The two-volume report of the excavation, "Fouilles de Pirak" (Fouilles de Pirak), was published in Paris in 1979. Its authors are Jarrige, Marielle Santoni and Jean-François Enault.

According to Jarrige, Pirak was a town at the foot of the Bolan Pass, inhabited from about 1700 to 700 BC. According to Bridget and Raymond Allchin, the evidence from Pirak for this later period, after the Indus cities, is the best from anywhere in the Indus region. In Jarrige’s view, the culture here blended older regional traditions, such as Quetta-style decoration, with new elements.

The biggest novelties are the horse and the camel. According to the Allchins’ book, the layers at Pirak have yielded both clay figurines of horses and camels and numerous bones of these animals. Jarrige writes that Pirak is the first place in South Asia where the horse is firmly attested, and that horses, donkeys and camels, alongside oxen, opened up new possibilities for transport and labour. The change also shows in the clay figurines: figurines of riders, horses and camels appear for the first time, although figurines of humped bulls continued to be made.

The fields changed too. Jarrige, citing the botanical analysis by Lorenzo Costantini, writes that at Pirak, alongside winter crops such as wheat and barley, summer crops such as rice, millet and sorghum were also found. Thick layers of rice husk show that it was an important crop, which could be grown in Kachi only with permanent irrigation. According to the Allchins, this is the first recorded appearance of rice and sorghum in the region.

And then iron. According to Jarrige, iron first appears at Pirak at about 1200 BC, but it did not change people’s lives at once. Flint tools continued to be made, and ended only after ironworking spread widely in the first millennium BC.

A story of continuity

Together, Nausharo and Pirak make an important point. On the end of the Indus Valley Civilisation, which Jarrige dates to about 1800 BC, older books explain that the people of the valley left because of natural disasters and invaders. Jarrige calls both the disasters and the invaders "presumed". In his view, the picture of Kachi in the second millennium is not one of decline but of an area more irrigated and cultivated than before. The changes are too complex to be attributed to invaders who would have brought rice from the Ganges, sorghum from the Arabian Gulf, and camels and horses from Central Asia all at once. At Pirak, despite the major changes, Jarrige sees "significant elements of continuity" with older traditions.

For a reader in Balochistan, this is no small matter. This plain of Kachi was not only a forerunner of the Indus Valley Civilisation. It lived on after it, adopted new animals, sowed new crops, learned a new metal, and remained inhabited until about 700 BC. For the people here, the great turning points of history were not endings but new beginnings.

Next Sunday: The Indus Valley Civilisation and Balochistan: from the Sutkagan Dor to the Bolan.