A Home for the Indus THE DEPARTMENT OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND ANCIENT HISTORY AT THE M S UNIVERSITY, VADODARA IS BUSY PLANNING A NEW MUSEUM ON THE INDUS VALLEY AND LATE HARAPPAN CIVILISATION

Above: Past perfect - Terracotta finds at Gola Dhoro

Kuldeep K. Bhan, head of the Department of Archaeology and Ancient history at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Vadodara has reason to smile. Jeff Morgan, Executive Director, Global Heritage Fund (GHF) California. USA, has decided GHF shall seriously support the Indus Valley research, excavations and museums in Gujarat. Now the M S University is projerl partner with GHF with an ambitious Museum project already in the pipeline. The signifi­cance of the project cannot be under-mined. "Even after the Harappan era ended in what is present day Pakistan. the Harappan civilisation continued to live in Gujarat. for more than 600 years. So, to under-stand what led to the sudden end of the Indus Valley Civilisation, there is no place better than Gujarat.

Morgan was in Baruda in last November i.e work out the details and a state-of-the-art museum is scheduled to open within three years. The Department is in the process of acquiring land for the museum near the Laxmi Vilas Palace in Baroda, and this summer a team comprising the M S Varsity Chancellor Mrunalinidevi Puar, Vice Chancellor Manoj Soni and Kuldeep Bhan went to England and made presentations to prospective sponsors. especially from amongst the Gujarati community, to garner financial and academic support for the project. The project has Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi's blessings and he is keen that Dholavira gets World Heritage Site status too.

The Harappan civilisation continued to exist in Gujarat for 600 years even after it disappeared from Pakistan

The Department of Archaeology and Ancient History at the University has had a very distin­guished history. Nurtured with care [Or scholarship and academic excel­lence by archaeologists of the emi­nence of 13. Subbarao, KTM Hegde and R N Mehta, its current faculty comprising VH Sonawane. Kuldeep Bhan, Ajithprasad, Pratapchandran and others has kept its nag high and flying. The Department was the first to excavate and document Champaner Pavag- adh, the medieval Sultanate period capital of Gujarat, in the late 1960s. That is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the only one in Gujarat. It also worked at Devni Mori Sangharam, a stupa housing a Buddhist relic, in Sabarkantha district. north Gujarat.

Team at Gloa Dhoro excavation site

Over the last three decades, however, the Department's focus of attention has been the more than 500 Indus Valley/late Harappan era sites doting the state, from the deserts of Kachchh to coastal Saurashtra, the flat, saline 1311x1 region, the inure than 120 sites in north Gujarat itself and scattered silos in the central-south industrial corridor. While the two most well-known sites are Lothal, near Ahmedabad, and Dhola Vira in Kachchh, the Department's exten­sive work al Gola Dhoro near Bagasra, Nageshwar near Dwarka, Jaidh near Jamnagar. Nagwada and so on. have led to a rich and rare haul of' late Harappan artifacts and an extensive understanding of Harappan city planning, building materials and lifestyle.

A special museum to house and display the "Technology or Crafts or Indus Valley - 2600 BC to 1900 BC" is the Department's current obses­sion. "Once the land is finalised, we will float a global tender for design and construction of the museum," says Bhan, adding that, "We would like the new museum to be built in a manner that resembles an ancient Harappan building." Technical information about construction methodologies, size of bricks, building style is available with the apartment where experts such as Ambika Patel and senior students are busy cataloguing, documenting and digitising their vast collection of Indus Valley objects.

In January this year, the Department was visited by Paul Jett, the Chief Conservator of the Smithsonian institute in the United States, who conducted a short, but detailed training programme in scientific object ­documentation for the start' and students. The Department has also joined with the WisconsinUniversity, USA, whose faculty member J. Mark Kenoyer has done extensive work on Harappan sites in Pakistan from 1995-2001 and who has offered his expertise at the Indian sites.

Although the Indus Civilisation is believed to be contemporaneous with Egyptian and Mesopotamian Civilisations and is considered of equal significance, the fact that the Indus Valley script continues to defy deciphers has been one of the major reasons why it has not been able to get its just due. Collecting information about the Indus Valley therefore continuous to he a laborious. time-consuming process, mired in hypothesis and conjecture.

An interesting, interactive and research-oriented Museum that looks holistically at a civilisation that spanned more than two millennia and was spread over 680,000 sq km could perhaps plug this lacuna. "While we do have a museum at Lothal, but that is a site-specific one," explains Bhan. "The new museum will be much wider in scope and scale. With our strength in research, the fact that we have the best collection of Harappan artifacts. and that so many of the sites are in Gujarat, Vadodara is the ideal place to situate such a museum."

Gujaratis, especially Vadodara­ites, could not agree more.

View of Indus Valley Museum at the Department of Archaeology & Ancient History, MS University

Please direct media inquiries to:
GHF Press press@globalheritagefund.org or (650) 325 7520

top