Urban Transition in Ghaggar Basin: From Mature Harappan to Painted Grey Ware

Disha Ahluwalia

The Ghaggar River, which flows through Haryana, Punjab, and Rajasthan in India and into Pakistan, has been a focal zone of cultural development in South Asia from protohistoric times to the medieval period. Along its course, in present-day Ganganagar and Hanumangarh districts of northwestern Rajasthan, numerous Harappan settlements flourished, including a few prominent excavated sites of Kalibangan, Baror, Tarkhanwala Dera, and Karanpura, which have been instrumental in reconstructing the nature of Harappan settlements in the study area. Following the disintegration of Harappan culture from 2000 to 1900 BCE, the Ghaggar basin experienced a significant occupational hiatus before the emergence of a new cultural horizon—the Painted Grey Ware (PGW) culture (1100 - 600 BCE), which exhibits distinctive characteristics in this region that were overlooked in earlier archaeological surveys. When the dataset collected from the fresh field survey was spatially compared with the reported Harappan sites, it showed that PGW-using communities reoccupied the landscape of the Ghaggar basin in ways that diverged significantly from earlier Harappan spatial patterning. This paper, therefore, examines the settlement pattern of PGW sites within the study area and the degree of divergence from the preceding Harappan occupation. This study uses field survey data and spatial analytical methods to evaluate settlement density, clustering, proximity to paleochannel, and ecological context. The results indicate that PGW settlements were generally smaller, more dispersed, and positioned along the dried channel in a linear pattern, contrasting sharply with the Harappan network. Thus, indicating an adaptive response to changing ecological conditions during the second millennium BCE. This study contributes to broader debates on urban transitions and challenges conventional definitions of urbanism in South Asia.