Excavations at one of the southernmost sites o f the Harappan Culture have revealed a large artificial basin adjacent lo the settlement area. This has been interpreted to be a mooring station for merchant vessels and the settlement itself has been considered an enirepBt for trade with Mesopotamia. In this article, the author argues that there is little substantive support for either o f these claims. The settlement in general and the basin in particular do not, in the author's view, appear to meet the requirements of a port. As an alternative, he suggests /hat the basin could have served as an irrigation tank for a modrmtely-sized but still rural village.0 anyone concerned with the study of T the ancient Orient, the site of Lothal on India's western seaboard has considerable importance. Not only is it the southernmost outlier of the Harappan Civilization to have been thoroughly excavated, thus clearly demonstrating the vast extent of this civilization, but the claim that Lothal was a port settlement with direct trade relations with Mesopotamia has wide implications (Rao 1962(Rao & 1963. Nearly half a century of research has unfortunately brought only rather scanty information on the nature of the Harappan economy and, particularly, its commerce. Until the excavation of Lothal, the direct evidence for Harappan maritime activity was limited to two depictions of boats (one on a pottery sherd, the other on a seal) from Mohenjo-daro, and likely as not these represent river craft rather than seaworthy vessels (Mackay 1937
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.