Harappan architecture

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Harappan architecture is the architecture of the Harappans, an ancient people who lived in the Indus Valley from about 3300 BCE to 1600 BCE. The Harappans were advanced for their time, especially in architecture.

Diagram of how Indus Valley cities were laid out (click on picture for bigger image).

1 City walls
2 Streets
3 Wells
4 Houses
5 Tools
6 Lack of temples
7 See also
8 References

[edit] City walls

Each city in the Indus Valley was surrounded by massive walls and gateways. The walls were built to control trade and also to stop the city from being flooded. Each part of the city was made up of walled sections. Each section included different buildings such as: Public buildings, houses, markets, and craft workshops.

[edit] Streets

The Harappans were great city planners. They based their city streets on a grid system. Streets were oriented east to west. Each street had a well organized drain system. If the drains were not cleaned, the water ran into the houses and silt built up. Then the Harappans would build another story on top of it. This raised the level of the city over the years, and today archaeologists call these high structures "mounds".

[edit] Wells

An old well in Lothal, a town near Harappa. The building styles of the two cities were fairly similar.

Although not every Harappan house had a well, there are quite common and compromise one of the most recognizable features of Harappan urbanism. Over the years, the level of streets and houses were raised owing to the accumulation of debris (see above) which necessitated raising the height of the wells. This is the reason why very tall wells are often seen at Harappa and in surrounding areas.

[edit] Houses

Houses and other buildings were made of sun-dried or kiln-fired mud brick. These bricks were so strong, that they have stood up to thousands of years of wear. Each house had an indoor and outdoor kitchen. The outdoor kitchen would be used when it was warmer (so that the oven wouldn’t heat up the house), and the indoor kitchen for use when it was colder. In present day, village houses in this region (e.g. in Kachchh) have two kitchens (outdoor and indoor). They use indoor kitchen mostly as store house and use as cooking place only when there is raining outside, otherwise prefer using outdoor kitchen. This is because people use dry shrub and cow dung as cooking fuel which is very smoky and makes indoor cooking difficult.

[edit] Tools

The Harappans used chisels, pickaxes, and saws. The saws they used had undulated edges so that dust escaped from the cut that they were sawing. These tools were most likely made of copper, as copper tools and weapons have been found at Harappan sites.

[edit] Lack of temples

So far, no unequivocal examples of temples have been found at sites belonging to the Indus Valley Civilization. Archaeologists do not know yet what religion was practiced in the Indus Valley Civilization. Community water pools (swimming or bathing) do exist, which may be linked with religion practice. Water plays an important role in Hindu sacred places, and pilgrimage to such places often involves sacred bathing (apart from Ganges). The architecture of water pools used by Hindu pilgrimage and in Harappan cities are similar, although scholars disagree whether such similarities are functional, or cultural, in nature.