Assessing the physical and pathological traits of human skeletal remains from cemetery localities at the Rakhigarhi site of the Harappan Civilization

Abstract

The Rakhigarhi site is the location of the ruins of an ancient megacity of the Harappan civilization and had not previously been investigated thoroughly. We tried to examine the physical and pathological traits of human skeletons (n = 37) from the cemetery at the site. In our study, a cranial index was calculated from one male skull (dolichocranic; index value = 65.78). The mean statures estimated by long bone length were 175.8 cm (male) and 166.1 cm (female). The indices of femoral diaphyseal shape were 79.8 (males) and 90.31 (females) for the platymeric index; and 113.78 (males) and 112.74 (female) for the pilasteric index. The dental health of the subjects appeared to be good as the overall prevalence of oral pathologies (caries and antemortem tooth loss) was generally low. Periosteal reactions were found in tibias and possible evidence of osteomyelitis was also observed in a femur. Some joint parts showed signs of osteoarthritis. Although various pathologies have been identified, we could not find any specific lesions suggestive of leprosy and tuberculosis in these skeletons. Although our study has added invaluable data to the existing information pool on the health and disease status of Harappan society, more accurate conjecture on the structure of Harrappan society based on bioarchaeological evidence will need additional research based on future excavations at Rakhigarhi cemetery.

Ritual, Urbanism, and the Everyday: Mortuary Behavior in the Indus Civilization

“…At a size of more than 2.2 km 2 , it is one of the largest Harappan cities outside of the Indus River Valley, in India (Dibyopama et al 2015;Nath 1999Nath , 2001Nath et al 2014;2015). Recent excavations at Rakhigarhi (Shinde et al 2012;Shinde et al 2018a) have yielded a large, well-preserved cemetery and in combination with excavations at Farmana (Shinde 2006;Shinde and Osada 2008;Shinde et al 2011;Mushrif Tripathy and Shinde 2019), important new information about mortuary behavior and Harappan society in northwest India has been gained (Mushrif Tripathy and Shinde 2019;Shinde et al 2018a, b;Woo et al 2018).…”

Craniofacial reconstruction of the Indus Valley Civilization individuals found at 4500-year-old Rakhigarhi cemetery

“…Anthropological information about the Rakhigarhi individuals is summarized in Table 1 and is also available in previous reports (Shinde et al 2018;Woo et al 2018). Sex and age were estimated by the techniques described in The Standards for Data Collection (Buikstra and Ubelaker 1994).…”