Mound Amri

History

N. G. Majumdar excavated here in 1929 and found, for the first time anywhere, a pre-Harappan settlement lying beneath a Harappan one. That single stratigraphic fact changed how the Indus Civilisation was understood: it had ancestors. Between 1959 and 1962 the French archaeologist Jean-Marie Casal worked three seasons at Amri and established the character of that earlier culture and how it gave way to the Harappan. Casal identified four successive periods of occupation; the earliest, the Amrian, is defined by mud-brick houses, copper and bronze, and its own painted pottery.

Historical Significance

Amri is the type site of the Amri culture, which spread across Sindh and into Balochistan through the fourth millennium BCE. Every discussion of what came before Mohenjo-daro starts here.

Architecture

The remains at Amri belong to the Chalcolithic period, with three occupational levels detected. Muslim occupation lies uppermost;

Why Visit

Come for what the mound means rather than what it looks like. This is where the prehistory of Pakistan was pushed back a thousand years, on the evidence of one trench.

Interesting Facts

• Occupation at Amri begins around 3600 BCE — roughly a thousand years before Mohenjo-daro's peak
• Majumdar's 1929 dig was the first time anywhere that a pre-Harappan layer was found under a Harappan one
• The pottery style found here is named after the site: Amri Ware
• Amri lies close to the Indus but only about 10 km from the eastern edge of the Balochistan uplands — a meeting point of two worlds