Indus cities and their art
A small figure cast in bronze (a copper alloy), only about four inches tall, is one of the best-known objects to survive from the Indus Valley. She was found at Mohenjodaro and is popularly called the 'Dancing Girl'. Her right hand rests on her hip, her left arm is covered in bangles, and she stands with an ease and energy that make her look alive. Objects like her matter because the Indus people left writing that nobody can yet read. With no readable texts, their art is one of the main ways we learn how they lived, what they valued and what they believed.
Indus Valley art was made in the second half of the 3rd millennium BCE. Its makers produced sculptures, seals, pottery, jewellery and terracotta figures. Their human and animal figures show close attention to the shape of the body, and the terracotta animals in particular were modelled with great care.
The two great sites of the Indus river system are Harappa on the Ravi in the north and Mohenjodaro on the Indus in the south. Both lie in present-day Pakistan. Many other sites have been excavated in India, including Lothal and Dholavira in Gujarat, Rakhigarhi in Haryana, Ropar in Punjab and Kalibangan in Rajasthan.
These cities are among the earliest examples of civic planning. Houses, markets, storage buildings, offices and public baths were laid out on a grid, and a highly developed drainage system served them. The same cities were home to craftspeople skilled in metal casting, stone carving, pottery and terracotta.
Laying out a town deliberately, with streets, buildings and services such as drains arranged to a plan.
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