DHOLAVIRA
The ancient site Dholavira (Lat. 23° 53’ 10” N., Long. 70° 13’ E.) is located half a way between the range of low hills and the Greater Rann of Kutch. Situated close to the northern border of Kutch in the Khadir Bet, Dholavira is the largest well preserved Harappan city in Gujarat. Dholavira, belonging to the urban phase, represents the easily recognizable face of the Indus civilization. In its sheer size and fabulous architectural remains, Dholavira has few parallels among the Indus cities. This major Harappan city is remarkable for its exquisite planning, aesthetic architecture, amazing water management system, general fortification wall etc.
Spread to an overall area of about 100 hectare, the entire city was planned into tripartite divisions: a high citadel (with two sub-divisions; castle and bailey), a middle town, and a lower town, configured like large parallelogram. These three major builtup areas together make an L-shaped design; citadel and middle town are arranged in north-south axis while middle town and lower town along are arranged in east-west axis. One of the salient components of these divisions was protection by massive fortification walls. In addition, there was also a perimeter wall protecting the entire settlement, which alone covered 48.3 hectare ofthe total area. The citadel was the most heavily protected part ofthe city. Built ofstone-slabs with a solid mud-brick core, the wall at its base was 18 meter thick and was provided with large gateways on all the four sides. The elaborately build northern main gate ofthe citadel opened to a large open space, which could have been a stadium or “ceremonial ground”. This gate has chiseled and polished stones and pilasters and beams and brackets, originally sported a large signboard inlayed with 10 enigmatic characters of the Harappan script.
Within the city there were a series of well planned rectangular water reservoirs, which was meant to harness the scarcely available water in the region.