9/1/2019
PUNE: Archaeologists
from the Deccan College Deemed University in Pune have discovered two
skeletons, a young male and a female, buried at the same time in the same grave
with the man’s face turned toward the woman.
It is the first anthropologically confirmed joint burial of a
couple in a Harappan cemetery. The 'couple's grave' was found in the Harappan
settlements excavated at Rakhigarhi in Harayana, some 150 km northwest of
Delhi. Archaeologists said evidence points at the couple being buried
simultaneously or about the same time. They could not find clear evidence if
one was buried after the other.
Although many settlements and cemeteries have been discovered
and investigated, no couple's burials at Harappan cemeteries have been reported
till date. Archaeologists who excavated this site found the two bodies placed
in the supine position (face up) with arms and legs extended. The discovery of
couple's burial sites has often sparked interest among archaeologists. The
recent findings by the Deccan College Deemed University team have been
published in the peer-reviewed international journal ACB journal of Anatomy and
Cell Biology.
The excavation and analysis were undertaken by the department
of archaeology of the Deccan College Deemed University and the Institute of
Forensic Science, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea. Vasant
Shinde, corresponding author of the research, and vice chancellor of Deccan
College Deemed University, told that archaeologists in India have often debated
about the historical meaning of joint burials.
He said the Harappans believed in life after death which
explains the pottery and bowls found in the graves. “The pots may have
contained food and water for the dead, a custom probably fuelled by the belief
that the dead may need them after death. Hence, the contemporary view of life
after death may actually be as old as 5,000 years,” Shinde added.
In the past, a Harappan joint burial discovered at Lothal was
regarded as a ‘probable’ instance of a widow's self-sacrifice as an expression
of the grief over her husband's death, he said. “Other archaeologists claimed
it was difficult to estimate the sexes of the individuals, and they may not
have been a couple. Other than the contentious Lothal case, none of the joint
burials reported from Harappan cemeteries till date have been anthropologically
confirmed to be a couple’s grave,” he said.
The manner in which the individuals had been buried - with the
male’s face towards the female - could commemorate lasting affection even after
death. “We can only infer, but those who buried the two individuals may have
wanted to imply that the love between the two would continue even after death,”
he said. Shinde said rarer types of joint graves have been found in Harappan
cemeteries, but there has not been one instance of a couple's grave reported
till date.
“A couple’s joint grave is not so rare in other ancient
civilizations. Yet, it is strange that they were not discovered in Harappan
cemeteries till now,” he said. The grave had burial pottery and a banded agate
bead, probably part of a necklace. It was found near the right collar bone of
the woman’s skeleton. Both skeletons were brought to the laboratory of the
Deccan College for analysis after the field surveys were completed. Each
skeleton’s sex was determined after studying the pelvic region.
“A narrow greater sciatic notch and the absence of a
preauricular sulcus is indicative of the male anatomy and a wider greater
sciatic notch and the presence of a preauricular sulcus is that of a female.
More such features during the analysis helped us determine the sex of each
skeleton,” Shinde added.
Their ages at the time of death have been estimated to be
between 21 and 35 years and the man’s approximate height as 5 feet 6 inches and
the woman’s as 5 feet 2 inches. Researchers could not find any evidence of
trauma or lesions in the skeletons.
“We also did not find any evidence that such a grave could
have been a result of any ‘sati-like’ custom. Among the 62 graves in the
Rakhigarhi cemetery, only this one grave was identified as a couple's burial.
It was not an outcome of any specific funeral custom commonly performed then.
It is more plausible that two individuals died at the same time or almost the
same time, and were buried together in the same grave,” Shinde said.
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