Which one of the following periods has provided the evidence of a ploughed field at Kalibangan in Rajasthan?

Correct — A, Early Harappan. Kalibangan lies on the left bank of the dried-up Ghaggar in Hanumangarh district of Rajasthan, and its mound preserves two occupations one above the other: an Early Harappan settlement, and above it the fortified town of the Mature Harappan phase. The famous ploughed field was found outside the settlement in the lower, Early Harappan levels, and it is the earliest ploughed field known anywhere in the subcontinent. What makes it valuable is not merely its age but its pattern — two sets of furrows crossing at right angles, one set widely spaced and the other close together, which archaeologists read as two crops grown together in the same plot, the taller one in the widely spaced rows. That single surface turns an inference into a demonstration: the seals and terracotta bulls tell us the ox was known, and the terracotta plough models from Cholistan and Banawali tell us what implement was used, but Kalibangan preserves the actual field. The site's other well-known finds, the fire altars on a raised platform, belong to the Mature Harappan town above.

• (b)Mature Harappan — The most tempting answer, because the Kalibangan everyone pictures — the walled citadel, the lower town, the row of fire altars — is Mature Harappan. But the ploughed field lies beneath that, in the earlier occupation. An officially keyed NDA question of 2023 marks the mature-phase attribution as wrong for exactly this reason.
• (c)Late Harappan — The post-urban phase of the civilisation, after about 1900 BCE, when the great cities were given up and settlement shifted eastward. Kalibangan had been abandoned by then, so nothing of that phase can be the answer here.
• (d)Chalcolithic — Not a phase of Kalibangan's own sequence. In Indian archaeology the label is generally used for the copper-and-stone farming cultures outside the Harappan zone — Ahar-Banas in Rajasthan, Kayatha and Malwa in central India, Jorwe in the Deccan — and the question is asking which of the Harappan phases produced the field.

Reconstructing Harappan agriculture is harder than reconstructing Harappan trade, because grain survives only in charred or waterlogged conditions and farming practices leave few durable traces. Archaeologists therefore build the picture from indirect evidence: charred grains and seeds, the bones of cattle, representations of the bull on seals and in terracotta, terracotta models of the plough, and, very rarely, a preserved field surface. Kalibangan supplies the last of these. Canals have been found at some Harappan sites in Afghanistan and Baluchistan and water reservoirs at Dholavira in Gujarat, which show that irrigation was also practised where rainfall was short.

The question is really about stratigraphy — about which layer of a mound something came from — and that is a habit worth acquiring, because several Harappan questions turn on it. At Kalibangan the sequence runs Early Harappan below and Mature Harappan above, and the two occupations are separated by a break; the ploughed field belongs to the lower one. Keep the site's finds sorted by phase: the ploughed field early, the fortified citadel and lower town, the fire altars and the bones of animals with them, mature. A second useful discipline is to distinguish the direct from the inferred. The bull on a seal is an inference about ploughing; a terracotta plough is a model of the implement; the furrowed field is the thing itself, and questions often reward knowing which is which.

• The ploughed field at Kalibangan is associated with Early Harappan levels and is the earliest ploughed field known in the subcontinent.
• It preserved two sets of furrows at right angles to each other, suggesting two different crops were grown together in the same plot.
• Terracotta models of the plough have been found at sites in Cholistan and at Banawali in Haryana, and representations of the bull on seals and in terracotta imply oxen were used for ploughing.
• Kalibangan's fire altars, on a raised platform in the citadel, belong to the Mature Harappan town that overlies the earlier settlement.
• The site stands on the left bank of the dried-up Ghaggar in Hanumangarh district, Rajasthan; the name is said to mean black bangles, after the fragments found there.

• Assigning the ploughed field to the Mature Harappan phase because the walled town and fire altars at the same site belong to it.
• Treating the terracotta plough models from Cholistan and Banawali as evidence from Kalibangan; the models and the field are different sites and different kinds of evidence.
• Using Chalcolithic as a synonym for Harappan; in Indian usage it usually names the non-Harappan copper-and-stone farming cultures.

As this period question, as a site-to-find match, or inside a statements item pairing the Kalibangan field with the Cholistan and Banawali plough models.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The two sets of furrows crossing at right angles in the ploughed field at Kalibangan are taken to indicate

  • (a)that the field was ploughed twice in the same season for the same crop
  • (b)that two different crops were grown together in the same plot
  • (c)the boundary between two separate holdings
  • (d)a ritual marking rather than cultivation

  Answer(b) that two different crops were grown together in the same plot — one set of furrows is widely spaced and the other close together, which suits a taller crop and a shorter one grown side by side.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Terracotta models of the plough, evidence for how Harappan fields were worked, have been found at

  • (a)Lothal and Dholavira
  • (b)Cholistan and Banawali
  • (c)Chanhudaro and Surkotada
  • (d)Rakhigarhi and Ropar

  Answer(b) Cholistan and Banawali — the models come from those sites, while the actual ploughed field comes from Kalibangan.