Why was Dholavira in the news recently?
- (a)Skeletons discovered at this site
- (b)For its conservation effects
- (c)For the discovery of gold and precious stones at this site
- (d)It received the UNESCO World Heritage Tag
Correct — D, It received the UNESCO World Heritage Tag. Dholavira was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List on 27 July 2021, four months before this paper was written, which is what put it in the news. The site is a Harappan city at Khadirbet in Bhachau taluka of Kutch district in Gujarat, standing on Khadir Bet, an island in the Great Rann, and it lies close to the Tropic of Cancer. It was located by J. P. Joshi of the Archaeological Survey of India in 1967-68 and excavated from 1989 over thirteen field seasons running to 2005. What makes it exceptional, and what the inscription rests on, is water: in a place with almost no rainfall the Harappans cut and built sixteen or more reservoirs of varying size, the largest of them carved to about seven metres deep and seventy-nine metres long, and fed them from seasonal streams through a system of dams and drains. A rectangular stepwell found in 2014 measured over seventy metres by twenty-nine and ten metres deep.
- (a)Skeletons discovered at this site — Burials have been found at Harappan sites, but the skeletal work that made headlines in this period belongs to Rakhigarhi in Haryana, where ancient DNA was recovered. That is a different site in a different state.
- (b)For its conservation effects — The option is printed with 'effects' where 'efforts' is plainly meant, which is one of this paper's own slips. Conservation work at Dholavira is real, but the news of 2021 was the inscription, not the conservation.
- (c)For the discovery of gold and precious stones at this site — Harappan sites have yielded beads, shell and semi-precious stone in quantity, and Dholavira was a working centre for such goods, but no gold-and-jewels discovery was the reason it was in the news in 2021.
Dholavira is one of the largest Harappan sites in India and the one that shows the civilisation's water engineering most completely. Its plan is unusual — a citadel and a middle town and a lower town, with the reservoirs skirting the settlement and the citadel raised in the centre — and it is built largely of dressed stone rather than the baked brick more familiar from Mohenjo-daro. It also produced the famous signboard of large inscribed signs found near the north gate.
Recent World Heritage inscriptions are among the safest current-affairs bets in any general knowledge paper, because there are few of them each year and each is a clean, dateable fact. The way to answer this one without having read the news is to notice what the four options are made of: three describe generic archaeological findings that could apply to almost any Harappan site, and one describes a specific event of a specific year. When a question asks why a place was 'in the news recently', the option naming a datable event will almost always beat the ones naming general characteristics. A second point worth keeping is the pairing of Dholavira with water — the same association is what UPSC tested in its own 2021 paper.
- Dholavira was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List on 27 July 2021.
- It lies at Khadirbet in Bhachau taluka, Kutch district, Gujarat, on Khadir Bet island in the Great Rann, close to the Tropic of Cancer.
- It was discovered by J. P. Joshi of the Archaeological Survey of India in 1967-68 and excavated from 1989 over thirteen field seasons to 2005.
- Sixteen or more reservoirs were built there, the largest carved to about seven metres deep and seventy-nine metres long; a rectangular stepwell found in 2014 measured about 73 by 29 metres and 10 metres deep.
- The site is built largely of dressed stone, with a citadel, a middle town and a lower town, and it yielded the inscribed Harappan signboard near its north gate.
- Attaching the Rakhigarhi skeleton and ancient DNA story to Dholavira.
- Assuming the inscription year is the excavation year; the site has been dug since 1989 and was inscribed only in 2021.
- Placing Dholavira in Rajasthan or Haryana; it is in Kutch, Gujarat, on an island in the Rann.
As a why-was-it-in-the-news item, or as a match between Harappan sites and their distinguishing features.
Which one of the following ancient towns is well-known for its elaborate system of water harvesting and management where a series of bunds created check-dams and canals carried the water to connected reservoirs?
- (a) Dholavira
- (b) Kalibangan
- (c) Rakhigarhi
- (d) Ropar
Answer(a) Dholavira
The same site and the same reason for its fame, asked by UPSC in the very year of the inscription. That item describes a town known for check-dams, canals and connected reservoirs and expects the answer Dholavira — which is precisely the water engineering that earned it the World Heritage listing.
In the citadel and lower-town areas of which one of the following Harappan cities, have several large cisterns and reservoirs been found?
- (a) Banawali
- (b) Mohenjodaro
- (c) Dholavira
- (d) Rakhigarhi
Answer(c) Dholavira
CDS came back to Dholavira the next year and asked for it by its cisterns and reservoirs. Two papers, two different doorways, one site — the reservoirs are the thing to remember about it.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Dholavira, inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2021, is located in which state?
- (a)Rajasthan
- (b)Haryana
- (c)Gujarat
- (d)Punjab
Answer(c) Gujarat — it stands on Khadir Bet, an island in the Great Rann of Kutch, close to the Tropic of Cancer.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Which one of the following features is Dholavira best known for?
- (a)A dockyard connected to a tidal creek
- (b)A ploughed field of the pre-Harappan phase
- (c)A system of stone-built reservoirs and water channels
- (d)A row of fire altars in the citadel
Answer(c) A system of stone-built reservoirs and water channels — the dockyard belongs to Lothal, the ploughed field to Kalibangan, and fire altars are also associated with Kalibangan.