Mehrgarh

Mehrgarh is an archaeological settlement in Balochistan, inhabited from the seventh millennium BCE into the second millennium BCE. Its early farming communities predate the mature cities of the Indus civilization.

Neolithic Revolution: The transition in which human communities increasingly adopted farming and permanent settlement. Mehrgarh preserves early evidence of this transition in South Asia.
Early agriculture: The cultivation of plants by communities beginning to rely on domesticated crops. Mehrgarh’s early inhabitants cultivated crops alongside herding and hunting.
Mehrgarh figurines: Small human and animal figures recovered from archaeological contexts at Mehrgarh. These objects document craft traditions across the settlement’s occupation.
Indus script: A still-undeciphered writing system used on objects of the Indus civilization. Its appearance belongs to a much later urban world than Mehrgarh’s earliest layers.
Mehrgarh chronology: The archaeological dating and phase sequence of occupation at Mehrgarh. Its long sequence underpins claims about the timing of regional social change.
Balochistan: A mountainous region spanning southwestern Pakistan, southeastern Iran, and southern Afghanistan. Mehrgarh lies in the Kachi Plain of Balochistan.
Animal domestication: The process by which people breed and manage animals for human purposes. Herding formed part of the settlement’s early subsistence economy.
Mehrgarh dental remains: Human teeth and jaws excavated from Mehrgarh’s burials and occupation layers. Their wear and drilled cavities illuminate diet and early dental practices.
Mohenjo-daro: A major planned city of the Indus civilization in present-day Sindh, Pakistan. Its urban scale contrasts with the earlier village settlement at Mehrgarh.
Indus Valley Civilization origins: Research on the processes that produced the urban civilization of the Indus region. Mehrgarh is central to tracing antecedents, without proving a simple direct line of descent.

Linked from 6 pages