Pre harappan and harrapan sites in India and Pakistan

Some of the most important Pre-harappan sites are Amri,Kot Diji,Gumla and Mehrgarh.Amri is a small village west of Indus in the Dadu district and nearly 100 miles south of Mohenjo-Daro.Here well planned houses have been discovered.They are of two types - in the first the houses are rectangular of various sizes with doors and mud floors.The mud walls had supporting wooden posts with possibly thatched roofs.Houses of the second type are internally divided into small cells and seem to be for storage and refuse purposes.There were wheel made pottery with different shapes and sizes and also designs and decorations.Burials in huge jars have been practised at that time.

Kot Diji is situated in Khairpur division of West Pakistan.The excavations have revealed the features of pre-Harappan settlement.The city has defensive walls,well-aligned streets and houses,large communal fireplaces and highly sophisticated wheel made pottery,tools and weapons of stone and copper and bronze,terracotta toys,figurines.The planning can be seen in the art and crafts.

Gumla lies to the north-west of the Dera Ismail Khan in Baluchistan.Here circular pits called community ovens have been found.Huts were discovered ,fine wheel made pottery were found along with remnants of agriculture.A bullhead painting of a horned deity represented in many seals from Mohenjodaro of the Indus Valley Civilization.The grave pits have cremated remains of human and animal bones.

 Mehrgarh is located near the Bolan Pass, to the west of the Indus River valley and between the Pakistani cities of Quetta, Kalat and Sibi. The site was discovered in 1974 by an archaeological team directed by French archaeologist Jean-François Jarrige, and was excavated continuously between 1974 and 1986, and again from 1997 to 2000. The earliest settlement at Mehrgarh—in the northeast corner of the 495-acre (2.00 km²) site—was a small farming village dated between 7000 BCE to 5500 BCE and the whole area covers a number of successive settlements. Archaeological material has been found in six mounds, and about 32,000 artifacts have been collected.Mehrgarh is now seen as a precursor to the Indus Valley Civilization.Early Mehrgarh residents lived in mud brick houses, stored their grain in granaries, fashioned tools with local copper ore, and lined their large basket containers with bitumen. They cultivated six-row barley, einkorn and emmer wheat, jujubes and dates, and herded sheep, goats and cattle. Residents of the later period (5500 BCE to 2600 BCE) put much effort into crafts, including flint knapping, tanning, bead production, and metal working. The site was occupied continuously until about 2600 BCE. Mehrgarh is probably the earliest known center of agriculture in South Asia.The most unexpected discovery is that of turquoise beads found in the burials.