Artifacts excavated from Vejalka village by MSU team.

Vadodara: Archaeologists from MS University have come across another Harappan site in Gujarat in Vejalka village in Ranpur taluka of Botad district of Saurashtra, about 50km from the famous site at Lothal near Ahmedabad.

Recently, a team of students and teachers from university's Department of Archaeology and Ancient History carried out excavations at the village which revealed that the rural hinterland of Saurashtra had a settlement belonging to Indus Vally civilization period around 4,300 years ago. There are over 190 Harappan sites, mainly in Saurahstra and Kutch region.

"This is primarily a rural site of the Harappan civilization (urban center). It is important to study the civilization's rural economy without which the urban economy could have never existed and hence we had carried out excavations at Vejalka," said head of the department professor K Krishnan, who led the excavation team.

"The artifacts obtained from various places in the village date back to 2,300 BC to 2,000 BC. During the excavation, we explored various materials. We found a large number of pottery, animal bones, mud walls, beads and antiquities from this village," said Krishnan adding that it will take two more years to complete the ongoing project.

He further said that the list of antiquities comprising of beads and stone blades suggest that apart from human settlement, there was also a small scale industry. "Researches say that in those days, houses were made of mud. We could locate such numerate mud structures that denoted domestic architecture," the professor added.

Archaeological evidence also show the presence of an indigenous group in the village. "Micaceous red ware, a kind of ceramic was found in abundance in the village. Presence of this ceramic confirms that Harappan civilization existed in the region," Krishnan said.

"Culture of this village helped in the development of Indus Valley civilization through supply of raw materials," said S Pratapchandran, one of the researchers.

