A visit to discoveries from Mundigak, a little-known Bronze Age and earlier [c. 4500-2000 BCE] site in southern Afghanistan. The objects are now at the Guimet, the French National Museum of Asian Art in Paris. Their similarity to objects and motifs in the ancient Indus Valley is remarkable. Examples include the pipal leaf, a rat trap, the humped bull, a bird whistle and classic goblets the Mundigak excavators called “brandy balloons.” There is even a stone sculpture which resembles the “priest-king.”
This 33 slide section is accompanied with excerpts from the writings of Jean-Marie Casal, who led the excavations at Mundigak in the 1950s, and the writings of other major scholars and archaeologists of the region. There are quotes from the lively on-scene memoir Time Off to Dig by the journalist Sylvia Matheson (1961), historic photographs from the site, and two dozen objects that remain largely unseen except when one visits the Guimet. Best of all, there are new more secure dates for Mundigak Periods I-IV . Finally, exciting new speculations by Massimo Vidale on the “Priest King” and the Mundigak head, and connections between Mundigak Palace and the “hut” motif of the recently discovered Halil Rud Civilization in Iran, are among the 7 new articles added by the world’s leading archaeologists filling in recent discoveries.
In the new The Archaeology of Afghanistan authors F. R. Allchin, Warwick Ball and Normand Hammond write: “The Helmand [river] is actually the only major perennial river located between Mesopotamia and the Indus River, and its importance in prehistoric cultural developments throughout this vast area between the Euphrates and the Indus cannot be over-emphasised. The location of Mundigak within the drainage of one of the main tributaries of this system is a major factor in understanding the cultural processes and phenomena which are reflected at this site.” (2019, p. 163)
“Jean-Marie [Casal] pointed. ‘There in front you see Siah Sang Pass—that is, Black Stone Pass.’
“We had turned north towards a line of low, black mountains splashed with one white patch. As we drove into the black hills, a feeling of foreboding seemed to sweep across us. The range was probably little more than a thousand feet above the plain, but so dark, so grim and completely barren, with such menacing black rocks, that it seemed the made-to-measure setting for a Shakespearian tragedy. It was a relief to emerge on the other side of the gloomy, winding track to see a large valley rimmed with grey-blue peaks.
“‘Mundigak,’ announced Jean-Marie, pointing across the valley.”
– Sylvia Matheson, Time off to Dig Archaeology and Adventure in Remote Afghanistan, London, 1961, p. 51
Mundigak is a site in southern Afghanistan near Kandahar, dated from about 3500 BCE to about 2400 BCE in its first four periods; afterwards there remains a lot of uncertainty. The quote above is from Jean-Marie Casal, in a memoir of accompanying the scrappy expedition in 1956 by Sylvia Matheson, an archaeological journalist in London who had tried for many years to make it to Afghanistan herself. “The results of these excavations still represent the major research effort concerned with the later periods of prehistory in southern Afghanistan,” write Cameron A. Petrie and Jim G. Shaffer in their lengthy piece on Mundigak in the The Archaeology of Afghanistan (2019, p. 161), an up-to-date synthesis of the available knowledge about the site and larger region, much expanded since it first appeared in 1978.
The story of Mundigak starts more than a thousand years before the mature Harappan civilization [c. 2450-2200 BCE]. By this time Mundigak IV, as Casal called it, had probably ended. The so-called “Palace” and “Temple” seen in the next images was built before this time, when Mundigak’s own development and importance, from the evidence of these buildings, would have peaked.
In The Rise of Civilization in India and Pakistan, archaeologists Bridget and Raymond Allchin write about “the relations between the upland valleys and the floodplains of the neighbouring Indus system, . . . an artery through which long-distance trade flowed. . .. It is probably this trade which provided stimuli for the development of an incipient urbanism in one part of the region, in southern Afghanistan and Seistan, leading to the growth of such sites as Shar-i Sokhta or Mundigak into towns or even ‘caravan cities’. One result of this interaction must have been that the many parallels between the material culture of this region and that of Central Asia, witnessed at sites of the Namazga I and II period [4500-3200 BCE in southern Turkenistan] continued to be a prominent features. The links between Central Asia, the Indo-Iranian borderlands and the Indus Valley seem to have been particularly strong and enduring, and must lead us to enquire whether they may not have involved more than mere trade. In the light of later history, and of the continuing movement of peoples down into South Asia from the north, one may legitimately expect movements of people to have been a major, if nowadays unfashionable, factor. We must also recall that – on the evidence of Mehrgarh – the beginnings of such contacts were already at this time at least fifteen centuries old.” (1982, p. 133)
Although very dry today, it ancient times the region might have been greener with seasonal rivers flowing south into Balochistan and Sindh. During Casal’s first visit in 1951, sudden thunderstorms flooded the valley and old river beds, nearly drowning animals at 1,800 meters (5,500 feet) in altitude. But the climate may not have been much different either, just a less denuded natural landscape in which the mounds of Mundigak once sat, and perhaps greater river flow.
Image: Satellite view of Mundigak from Google Earth and (inset): The Mound Before Excavation, early 1950s, from Jean-Marie Casal, La Civilisation d l’Indus et ses enigmes [The Indus Civilization and its Puzzles] 1969, p. 26 and photograph of him from a biographical website, and Sylvia Matheson onsite from her book.
“The whole district was known as Kar Karez and the track eventually took us through a village called Mundigak, the name Jean-Marie had borrowed for the mound. High mud-brick walls, square, flat-roofed houses, all skirting the grey gravel of the river-bed, this was Mundigak village, but not our ultimate destination. The track still ran for several miles across the river bed and on to the next range of hills, but suddenly we turned off by a small cairn of white-washed mud-pise erected by the side of the road. This was the signpost to the dig.
“We turned towards the west across hard, dry, hilly ground split by crevasses and the stream beds through which no water flowed. We rocked and bumped, guided by the ancient tracks left by the vehicles last year and the year before that. Gradually the country resolved itself into a series of shallow mounds rising like air bubbles on freshly-beaten batter until we topped one of the bubbles to see the excavations crowning the highest mound of all.”
– Sylvia Matheson, Time off to Dig, p. 52
Jean-Marie Casal (above, 1905-77), the French archaeologist who excavated the site between 1951 and 1958 wrote: “The site is located in the valley of Kishk-i-Nakhod Rud, now a dry tributary of the Arghandab [River], which sometimes is transformed for a few hours into a clear river when thunderstorms fall in the neighboring mountains. At the height of the site, this valley is almost parallel to that of the Arghandab. It is by a narrow road winding on the side of an arid and parched mountain, all of black stone, that one reaches it from the valley of the Arghandab to where the site of Mundigak rises. Only a few kilometers wide, the plateau extends to 1,400 meters above sea level between two bare chains. A few green islands mark the location of villages where water comes from the foot of the mountain through underground canals (karez),. Debris cones mark the ungrateful plain like lines of molehills. several hundred meters from the river and about two kilometers from the few houses in the hamlet of Mundigak which gave it its name. It is from this hamlet, as well as from other villages in the valley, some of which are distant from a ten kilometers, from which comes the labor force employed in the excavations. Local resources are scarce, and it is from Kandahar that the main source of supply and potable water for the [French Archaeological] Mission must come. Despite the short distance [55 km], it takes no less than two and a half hours for each journey.
“Isolated as it seems to be now, the Mundigak site surprises by its onetime importance. At first sight, the eye is struck by this head, shaped by the cone-shaped erosion, about twenty meters high above the plain, and wide at the base of about one hundred and fifty meters, extended towards the West and the South mainly by larger but less tall tepes [mounds] which indicate the extension that this establishment once took. The scattered pottery on the surface which approximates the extent of the ancient occupations hardly covers less than twenty hectares.” (Jean-Marie Casal, L’Afghanistan et les problèmes de l’archéologie indienne, Artibus Asiae, Vol. 19, No. 3/4 (1956), from the French by Google Translate.)
Image 2, from Matheson’s Time off to Dig: “The camp at Mundigak, seen from the top of Mound A. The huts, our living quarters, are built of mud-pise [mud reinforced with straw]. In the foreground are remains of the earliest prehistoric dwellings, which had been buried under thirteen other habitation levels. The small oblongs with circles in the middle are the fireplaces. The photograph was taken on the last day of the dig when the workmen had gathered outside the mess hut to select their baksheesh.”
One of the most exciting developments in recent times has been new chronologies of Mundigak, interesting because they put the palace and head in this picture before the height of the ancient Indus civilization. Here are the dates from radiocarbon analysis, with Mundigak V being the most imprecise. After Mundigak V, there were two more periods but the site seems to have been abandoned and archaeologists surmise that Kandahar became the major urban center in southern Afghanistan.
Mundigak Periods Recast
Period Casal 1961 Besenval/Didier 2004 Schaffer 2019
Mundigak I 4500-4000 BCE 3750-3500 BCE 4000-3500 BCE
Mundigak II 3500-3750 BCE 3500-3250 BCE 3500-3400 BCE
Mundigak III 3000-2500 BCE 3250-2750 BCE 3400-2900 BCE
Mundigak IV 2500-2000 BCE 2750-2500 BCE 2900-2400 BCE
Mundigak V 1900-1750 BCE 2500-2250 BCE unknown
Mundigak I [4000-3500 BCE, we will use Shaffer’s chronology throughout] seems to have been built on virgin soil, and perhaps had tents in the initial periods. Towards 3500 BCE the first mud-brick structures were found by Casal, single rooms made of brick with doorways, and interior ovens. Stronger foundations appear, with mud-bricks and some ovens and foundations made of paksha, or rammed earth, “compacting a damp mixture of sub soil that has suitable proportions of sand, gravel, clay, and stabilizer, if any” (see Wikipedia).
Mundigak II [3500-3400 BCE] had an increased number of structures, a possible cattle pen and feed trough, and exterior wall buttresses. “A very marked characteristic of Period II was a much greater density in the disposition of structures” write Shaffer and Petrie in their chapter on Mundigak in The Archaeology of Afghanistan (2019, p. 169). Central ovens appear and the likelihood of specialized manufacturing areas. “The overall picture is one of continuous rebuilding, reflecting internal population growth and shifts within a village settlement pattern. A significant development for Period II, however, is the possible existence of functionally distinct areas and structures within the settlement” (Ibid., p. 170).
Mundigak III [3400-2900 BCE] saw the construction of a retaining wall to expand habitation, wells, multi-chambered mud-brick ovens possibly used as potter’s kilns, small windows and more. Burials were found on Mound C, including one belonging to a lamb. “From Period I through IIIc the general impression has been one of structures and debris associated with multi-purpose activities necessitated by a sedentary agricultural way of life. After Period III, however, a very different picture emerges” write Shaffer and Petrie (Ibid., p. 172).
“Mundigak IV [2900-2400 BCE],” write Bridget and Raymond Allchin, “saw the transformation of the settlement into a town with massive defensive walls and square bastions of sun-dried bricks. The main mound was capped with an extensive building identified as a palace, and another smaller mound with a large ‘temple’ complex. The brick walls of the palace had a colonnade of pilasters. The city was destroyed and twice rebuilt during the period. An increasing quantity of pottery was decorated with a red slip and black paint, and there was a growing use of naturalistic decoration showing birds, ibex, bulls and pipal trees. Female figurines of the ‘Zhob mother goddess’ type are found, and these have their closest parallels in Mehrgarh VII, Damb Sadaat III and Rana Ghundai IIIC. This suggests that Mundigak IV corresponds with these periods in its earlier phase, while in its later phase it is contemporary with the Mature Harappan period. Further support for this may be found in the male head with hair bound in a fillet, made of white limestone, assigned to Mundigak IV.3. This piece has a certain relationship to the celebrated priest-king of Mohenjo-daro even if the relationship is not a direct one” (The Rise of Civilization in India and Pakistan, 1982, p. 133-34).
Mundigak V follows a period of abandonment after Period IV, and is “extremely problematic”, because is likely well after 2000 BCE. There was another large structure built on top of Mound A, but there is a pronounced dissimilarity between the material culture of Period V and “any other prehistoric culture yet defined in the area,” write Shaffer and Petrie (p. 186-7). There are also undated Mundigak VI and VII periods.
The “palace” and head shown above, however, is from the start of Period IV. “There is little evidence to definitely indicate that this structure represents a ‘palace’, but there can be no doubt that it was monumental,” write Shaffer and Petrie, “significantly different from previous and contemporary structures, and culturally important. However, to designate it as a ‘palace’ implies a degree and level of political organisation, which cannot be presently confirmed. The façade was embellished with a line of engaged semi-columns (henceforth ‘colonnade’). This distinctive architectural device is seen elsewhere in the Bronze Age such as at the ‘temple’ on Mound G at Mundigak (see below, where the engaged ‘semi-columns’ are projecting triangles) and at the ‘palace’ at Dashli, with its rows of external repeated projecting buttresses. It is possible that the device originated in fourth millennium BC at Uruk/Warka in Mesopotamia, in the cone-decorated engaged semi-columns at the ‘White Temple’, although such features might have originated locally in Afghanistan and subsequently have a long later history in Central Asia” (p. 173-4).
Jean-Francois Jarrige, a French colleague of Casal and the excavator of Mehrgarh, an even earlier (c. 7000 BCE) site roughly 400 kilometers southeast of Mundigak in northern Balochistan, argued for an influence from the south and east: “Work at Mehrgarh is enough to make obsolete the current interpretations development of sedentary life in the Indo-Iranian borderlands and more particularly in the greater Indus system. Evidence of a well-developed agricultural settlement, with very substantial mud-brick architectural features in the course of the seventh millennium B.C. at Mehrgarh, preceding no less impressive Chalcolithic and Bronze Age occupations, has helped us to underline the importance of the role played by the whole socio-cultural substrata of the early communities of Baluchistan and Sind in the genesis of the Indus civilization. It is no longer possible to believe, as had been the case, that the first occurrence of farming communities in Baluchistan and in the Indus valley resulted fro migrations from the Iranian plateau and southern Central Asia at about 4000 B.C. It is no longer tenable to attribute to these allegedly early colonizers from the West the foundation of Mundigak, a site excavated by J. M. Casal in southern Afghanistan in the 1950s. . . . This diffusionist theory has, in fact, prevented scholars not familiar with the data from perceiving the degree of urbanism reached by sites such as Shar-i-Sokhta and Mundigak expanded over more than fifty hectares, with a few monumental buildings surrounded by impressive defensive walls. Work conducted at Mehrgarh has clearly shown the the cultural assemblage of the preurban phases of Mundigak (Period IV) is closely linked to Baluchistan. The foundation of Mundigak can even be interpreted as the settling of people from Baluchistan who were probably aware of the importance of such a location for the control of nearby mineral resources” (The Early Architectural Traditions of Greater Indus as seen from Mehrgarh, Baluchistan, in Studies in the History of Art, Vol. 31, 1993, p. 25-26).
Clearly Mundigak fits into the cultural puzzle of formative influences around it, but it also could have been the source of innovations and motifs carried elsewhere.
A decade later, after excavating the pre-Indus site of Amri in Sindh, Jean-Marie Casal published the book La Civilisation d l’Indus et ses enigmes [The Indus Civilization and its Puzzles] (1969). In the section Mundigak becomes a small town he wrote: “At this point in its evolution, Mundigak undergoes a profound and sudden change. The beginning of Period IV [2900-2400 BCE] was marked by the breakup of the village into a city. The inhabitants abandon the already high mound of ten meters, formed by the successive reconstructions of their houses, and they rebuild their homes at its foot. The abandoned mound is then leveled to serve as a pedestal for a unique monument. Its northern facade, the only one still standing over a length of 35 meters, was adorned with engaging columns and a frieze of merlons [solid upright section of a battlement in architecture or fortifications]. This large building in which we call ‘the Palace’ was made of raw bricks, as was the custom already for a long time for all constructions, but special care had been devoted to it. This entire facade was covered with a white plaster many times redone, and the door frame was painted red.
“Not far from the Palace, to the east [Mound G], stood another monument enclosed in a wall plated with buttresses of triangular section, at the same time the city surrounded itself with a double enclosure reinforced outside powerful quadrangular buttresses , and flanked along its length and at the angles of rectangular bastions. Although the erosion of the soil did not make it possible to find this outer enclosure over its entire length, the city, judging by the distribution of the remains of pottery from this period, should then have the shape of a square whose each side was about a kilometer long.
“This sudden transformation of Mundigak supposes a certain number of factors which were seeded during preceding periods. First, the economic factors. These major projects imply a community rich enough to have a sufficient workforce, freed from the imperative concern of producing their daily food. The political factor is the appearance of an authority capable of imposing itself on all others and of coordinating these available forces.
“The study of the material of this period and its comparison with that of better known sites suggests that this transformation takes place appreciably during the period which in Mesopotamia is the Archaic Dynastic, that is to say in the second quarter of the third millennium BC, around 2600. If Mundigak then becomes a small town, does this change respond to what Gordon Childe called “the urban revolution”? It does not seem to. The size of the city is still very modest and does not approach that of the large cities of the Near East or that of Mohenjo-Daro. However, the economic and social level reached must have allowed full-time workers: this is undoubtedly the case for potters, it is certainly also that of coppersmiths if we judge by the many objects and weapons of copper.
“The labour force was abundant enough to erect the Palace and ramparts as well as this monument whose enclosure was rimmed with triangular projections. The large size of what remains and existence, at the foot of the main building, of a small elevated room which housed an altar and offering tables, a pottery drain intended for draining liquid, the presence in the adjacent courtyard of another oval altar where the ashes were present, all prompted us to see a temple there. The name perhaps is too pompous, but there is little doubt that this building had a religious use” (La Civilisation d l’Indus et ses enigmes [The Indus Civilization and its Puzzles] (1969) pp. 65-68).
Images
1. Mound A, Period IV, The Palace.
2. Door in the Colonnade, giving access to Passage I.
3. Large North-South Wall (all images from Jean-Marie Casal, Fouilles De Mundigak [Excavations at Mundigak], 1961).
“We must therefore consider the ‘ramparts’ as monumental structures in much the same way as the ‘palace’ and ‘temple’ are, part of an overall monumentalisation of Mundigak that marks Period IV. The command of resources to build these structures, plus the need to make a major architectural statement, implies a renewed status for Mundigak, of more than just a major settlement. Just what this status might be must remain a matter of speculation, but it does lend support to Whitehouse’s initial suggestion that Mundigak anticipated Kandahar as the regional centre. In this connection it is worth observing that a village and site just 3 km to the south of Mundigak (albeit with no material earlier than Parthian) preserves the name ‘Arukh’, derived from the Achaemenid Harahuvatiš/Greek Arachosia/Early Islamic ar-Rukhaj, the ancient name for the region” write Jim Shaffer and Cameron Petrie in The Archaeology of Afghanistan (2019, pp. 184-85).
Sylvia Matheson writes of her time with the excavations: “We were standing on top of the mound overlooking the camp— a wonderfully strategic and imposing site with the whole valley spread before us. We walked to the edge of a wide terrace with a complex of small rooms opening into each other. There was a high but not very thick outer wall and a very narrow entrance in the middle. This opened out into what seemed to have been yet another terrace now eroded and crumbling down the hillside. Stepping through this narrow opening from the outside, I found myself in a corridor barely shoulder-width; to my left had once ascended a steep narrow staircase; to the right the corridor led to an even narrower exit on die very edge of the main terrace. This tiny corridor had been full of spent arrowheads, clay sling bullets, spear heads and traces of fire; there was little doubt that it had been hastily built as some kind of fortification and had been fairly easily taken after a sharp assault.
“Back on the main terrace, lining the southern side to the right, stretched the famous colonnade. The columns were about four and half feet high, standing on a small platform; many thick coats of whitewash still clung to the columns in places, even now after they bad been deprived o f their protective sand covering and re-exposed to (lie elements for the past twelve months. I was surprised by the brilliance ofthe red ochre paint on the doorway that cut the colonnade at its western end. Even today well-to-do villagers whitewash their houses every summer and one can fairly safely reckon a year’s occupation for every layer of chunam, a kind of natural lime. Ginette Casal had managed to count twenty-nine distinct layers of this chunam on the walls of one room attached to the colonnaded building! This was only one of many examples we were to find of the uninterrupted pattern of thought and social customs that had prevailed for so many thousands of years in this conservative yet by no means historically tranquil corner of Asia.
“Right along the bottom of the colonnade ran a small platform or bench, about two feet wide, and the tops of the half-columns backed by a mud-brick wall were decorated with mud-brick merlons at arranged in a battlemented design.
The whole structure was made of mud brick and mud pise, fashioned indeed of the very soil itself, mixed with water and in some cases a little chopped straw, and baked in the heat of the sun. It would take a very well trained and acute eye to mark the difference between walls and filling in the course of excavation, although like a good many other things, once the buildings had been revealed they were unmistakable. There was too much to absorb on a first visit and even at the end of the season it was uncertain what purpose the entire structure served; it may have been a temple, it may have been a palace or a public building, but so far there was no proof, although by the end of the dig, like everybody else, I had my own pet theories.” (Time off to Dig, London, 1961, p. 57-58)
Matheson also discusses the finds on top of the structure seen here, the layers excavated before it was exposed and which had been built later, during Mundigak V (2400-2000 BCE?]: “It was, rather naturally, the tenth and eleventh layers that interested me most. The monument massif was well named. The rooms and i(i races of the colonnaded monument had been filled in with mud- brick debris to take the weight of the new building, a structure that appeared to Jean-Marie and Jacques like some huge truncated half pyramid of masonry cubes piled on top of each other. There was no masonry here, however, but only huge blocks of sun-dried bricks with extensive terraces that had been repaired several times while in use. The northern side of the main bulk of the structure was over shadowed by an even higher massive structure of brickwork that adjoined it and appeared to have been used finally as the pedestal for several rectangular cells. All this part of the mound was badly damaged by earthquakes. So little of significance had been found in ibis building that it was mainly the absence of finds of a domestic nature that indicated its function as a public building of some kind. There were a bronze knife with a bone handle, a few shreds of red pottery with deep purple designs, and one small terracotta figurine possibly of a mother-goddess, with crudely-formed features and two spots of black paint for the eyes. By contrast the breasts were delicately moulded with a necklace and pendant fading between them. It was more like the figurines found in the Indus Valley than those of the much nearer Zhob Valley in Baluchistan.” (Ibid., p. 101)
What are the similarities between these this white limestone head found at Mundigak in southern Afghanistan and the so-called “Priest King” from Mohenjo-daro?
Massimo Vidale offers a fascinating conjectural yet evidence-based discussion in his article A “Priest-King” at Shahr-i Sokhta? “Mundigak IV, 3, the context of the head found near the terraced building of Mundigak,” writes Vidale, “is contemporary to Shahr-i Sokhta [in Iran] late Period III to Period IV (Phases 3 to 0, ca. 2200-1800 BC . . . [when] all the stone sculptures of the same model from Mohenjo-Daro were notoriously found in the uppermost and latest layers of the city’s settlement, i.e. to late horizons grossly belonging (following the chronology established at Harappa) to Harappa 3C period, ca. 2200-1900 BC (Kenoyer 19901, 1991b) ” (pp. 5-6).
In other words, there is temporal continuity among this type of bust, which may speak of elites from the Kandahar-Helmand region including Shahr-i Sokhta having presence or ideological affinities with Indus beliefs or elites. “For which reason part of the people of different civilizations made and circulated across such an enormous area, and in the context of completely different societies, the same statuettes?” asks Vidale. While may not yet know many of the answers, there to be inescapable continuities between Mundigak and the Indus civilization of which there are probably more to follow in the coming years that will complicate our picture of the Bronze Age in the Bactrian-Indo-Iranian region.
Read A “Priest-King” at Shahr-i Sokhta?
Another article looks at another stone sculpture in this possible tradition Stone Sculptures from the Protohistoric Helmand Civilization, Afghanistan by George F. Dales.
Images
1. White limestone head, Period IV.3 [c. 2900-2400 BCE], and the “Priest-King” from Mohenjo-daro
2. White limestone head, Period IV.3 [c. 2900-2400 BCE], limestone head images from Jean-Marie Casal, Fouilles De Mundigak [Excavations at Mundigak], 1961).
This painted bowl at the Guimet is from the Mundigak IV period, 2900-2400 BCE and involves some elaborate and very finely painted designs that could be an abstraction of the pipal leaf, sacred or of great reverence to Mundigak and Indus cultures. Nonetheless, Mundigak objects have a distinctive style from Indus objects, and bear much in common with another so-called larger Helmand Civilization site now in Iran, Shar-i Sokhta. This is true even if one supposes that at the time of this bowl, Mundigak, like the more northern Afghan site of Shortugai, was part of the Indus culture and traditions.
There is also little doubt that Mundigak site precedes the height of Indus civilization. “The Early Harappan (c. 3200-2600 B.C.) is made up of four regional phases,” writes Gregory Possehl “that are thought to be generally contemporary: the Amri-Nal [Sindh-Balochistan], Kot Diji [Sindh], Damb Sadaat [Balochistan], and Sothi-Siswal [Gujarat]” (The Indus Civilization A Contemporary Perspective, 2002, p. 40).
The so-called Mundigak III period (3400-2900 BCE) corresponds with this most closely, and follows a Mundigak I [c. 4000-3500 BCE] and Mundigak II [c. 3500-3400 BCE] periods. There are many similarities both with these Early Harappan cultures to the east and south, and traditions in the north and west, putting Mundigak at the crossroads of different emerging regional pre-Bronze Age cultures.
See Image 3 on the post about the article Shahr-i Sokhta and the chronology of the Indo-Iranian regions by Jean-François Jarrige, A. Didier, and Gonzague Quivronfor for similar designs and a drawing of the center of this bowl.
“These balloon glasses are characteristic of the urban period [Period IV]. Most often, their decor includes either rows of caprids with an elongated body and hatching in the Iranian style of Susa II, or leaves of the pipal tree so frequent in the decorative repertoire of the Indus civilization” wrote Casal (Archeologia, Nov.-Dec. 1966, p. 37).
“Copper and bronze did not appear at Mundigak before the sixth level, in the form of a long pin with a flattened head pierced by a hole. The layers that followed—still all dwelling houses—showed the continuation of a well-established way of life with the same type of buildings and very little modification. The painted pottery improved considerably at this level and became abundant from the eighth level upwards. From the very beginning the pottery had been buff, and in the seventh level, side by side with naturalistic designs of leaves and so on, appeared pottery with a stepped motif, distinctive of the Quetta-ware. In the eighth level came the first signs of a “brandy balloon”—buff or rose-tan goblets exactly the same shape as present- day brandy glasses, a type of pottery that developed in the next two layers till the goblets were found in all sizes, some painted with ibexes and some with the leaves of the wild fig tree.” (Matheson, Time off to Dig, London, 1961, p. 100)
“Other trees may have also been held as sacred,” writes Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, “but for over 6,000 years, different cultures of the region have used the pipal tree as an important symbol. Heart-shaped pipal leaves, often arranged in groups of three, were commonly painted on small jars during the Early Harappan period before the rise of Indus cities. We find elaborate paintings of the pipal tree and its wide, spreading branches on large storage jars as well as smaller domestic vessels from the Indus period. Depicted in the Indus script as well as oe faience ornaments and shell inlay, the heart-shaped pipal leaf was reproduced in many contexts and styles throughout the Indus cities.” (Ancient Cities of the Indus Valley Civilization, p. 105)
Casal also noted that while “the shape of the tasting glass is generally reserved for a decor of naturalist inspiration borrowed either from the animal kingdom, or from the vegetable kingdom, and each one marks their own affinities. While the treatment of caprids [goats] is reminiscent of that of oxen in Kulli ceramics, the plant motif first evokes the pipal leaves which appear on pottery in the Indus valley.” (Quatre campagnes de fouilles à Mundigak, 1951-1954, pp. 171-2)
Jean-Francois Jarrige, Aurore Didier and Gonzague Quivron write in Shahr-i Sokhta and the chronology of the Indo-Iranian regions (2011), “More recently the excavations carried out by S.M.S. Sajjadi in the graveyard of the Shahr-i Sokhta from 1997 to 2000 have revealed a series of tombs dated to Period IV [ 2300-2100 BCE]. Tomb 1705 has provided a bowl decorated inside with stylized pipal leaves arranged in large volumes in the same style as the bowl mentioned above (fig. 12:8), and very similar to the examples from Lal Shah and Nausharo IC [2700-2600 BCE]. Other pipal designs founds on bowls in tomb 1705 (fig. 12:10) are obviously very close to decorations characteristic of the same area in Balochistan (fig 12:9, 11). These significant and complex designs cannot be submitted to fortuitous comparison, unlike the simple geometric motifs” (p. 22).
“Under the staircase a long, narrow room about the size of a small walk-in larder was now appearing. From it we took, one after the other, a series of perfect, buff-ware drinking vessels and goblets, as good as the day they left the potter’s wheel, and I tried to imagine that a housewife of long ago, storing her precious drinking vessels so carefully that four or five thousand years later I could find them just as she had left them.” (Matheson, Time off to Dig, London, 1961, pp. 95-6)
Image 2: Top portion of Figures Ceramic from Period IV [2900-2400 BCE] from Casal, Fouilles De Mundigak [Excavations at Mundigak], 1961.
A painted goblet from Mundigak IV, dated from approximately 2500-2000 BCE. Note the stylized design accompanying the pipal leaf, also seen on the painted bowl opening this series.
Bridget and Raymond Allchin describe “the emergence of a Baluchistan ‘province’ of ceramic decoration . . .. Stylized plant motifs, particularly the pipal leaf, occur as well as less obvious plant and bird motifs. The art of pottery painting seems to have reached its peak in these regions in the late fourth and early third millenia, with the graceful fish or animals of the polychrome Nal ware, the naturalistic friezes of animals or pipal leaves of Mundigak IV, the ‘Animals in the landscape’ motifs of Kulli ware, recalling the ‘Scarlet’ ware of Diyala and Susa in south-west Persia, and many more. The whole of this development shows strong Iranian parallels, and many of the patterns and motifs can – in a general, rather than a precise way – be paralleled in Iran. Indeed, in broadest terms, the Baluchi style of pottery appears as a regional development. It is also interesting to wonder whether any of the designs were shared in the decoration of textiles. It is often striking to find in modern carpets motifs recalling those used anciently in Baluchistan” (The Rise of Civilization in India and Pakistan, 1982, p. 140).
Sylvia Matheson writes: “The monument colonnade had been suddenly and violently destroyed by attackers, probably the builders of the monument massif [the Mundigak V structure built on top of the Mundigak IV monument colonnade] and the creators of the coarse pottery. They were obviously an entirely different people from those who hail made the graceful buff “brandy balloons” similar to the Kulli-ware of Baluchistan and that of the Indus Valley, pottery that was tentatively dated at the second half of the third millennium.
“Now supposing a considerable number of the buff sherds had been found among the later coarse red ones, this could imply a mingling of the two cultures and a gradual absorption of one into the other. Or it might mean that someone on the dig had been careless in labelling baskets just at the time of transition from one layer to the next, and had mixed the two levels. Supposing the red pottery had been found among the buff of the earlier layer? The confusion that this must arouse can best be visualized by imagining’ hat you were exploring the ruins of a bombed council house in London just after the war. If you found a seventeenth-century coin you might assume with good reason that (a), the victim of the air raid had been a numismatist, or (b) that the house had been built on the site of a much older one from whose foundations had come the coin, or (c) that it had even been dropped by a careless present-day passer-by.
“Supposing you were digging a Saxon burial mound and had gone through a foot or so of obviously undisturbed soil and there among the warrior’s bones and the weapons and sherds of funerary pottery in your finds basket, you discovered a piece of a Picasso dish! Knowing your site you would assume that someone must have deliberately “planted” the twentieth-century sherd in the ground, or carelessly dropped it in the wrong basket. But imagine how confusing thu sort of thing can be when you are digging a completely unknown, undated site!
“As Sir Mortimer Wheeler once said, ‘Pottery is the alphabet of archaeology’ and, in order to read the language it spells, it is absolutely essential to keep the finds of each level completely separate.” (Time off to Dig, London, 1961, pp 91-92)
A Mundigak III (3400-2900 BCE) bowl.
J.F. Jarrige writes in The Early Architectural Traditions of Greater Indus as Seen from Mehrgarh, Baluchistan “Work conducted at Mehrgarh has clearly shown that the cultural assemblage of the preurban phases of Mundigak (period IV) is closely linked to Baluchistan. The foundation of Mundigak can even be interpreted as the settling of people from Baluch who were probably aware of the importance of such a location for the control of the nearby mineral resources. The remains from period I at Mundigak fit perfectly the cultural assemblage of period III at Mehrgarh, dated to the end of the fifth and the very beginning of the fourth millennium B.C. Now that we know that the Chalcolithic phase of Mehrgarh is directly llinked to more than two millennia of local Neolithic tradition, early Mundigak no longer appears as a seminomadic settlement of colonizers from Iran or Turkmenia.” (Studies in the History of Art, Vol. 31, Symposium Papers XV: Urban Form and Meaning in South Asia: The Shaping of Cities from Prehistoric to Precolonial Times (1993), p. 26)
The center stone button seal is from Period IV (2900-2400 BCE), while the right most stone button seal is similar to ones from Period II (3500-3400 BCE) and Period III (3400-2900 BCE).
“Stone seals appear in Mundigak in their most crude form of Period II [3500-3400 BCE]. They are flat and carry two perforations intended for a hanging cord. More elaborate, but still adorned with geometric designs, they multiplied in the following periods. Copper seals compartments, carrying on the reverse a perforated boss, will appear only when Mundigak is transformed into a small town.” (“Mundigak,” an article by Jean-Marie Casal, in Archaelogia Nov-Dec 1966, p. 32)
Casal further wrote: “Despite all these achievements, Mundigak lacks an important element of those that characterize an urban civilization: writing. We have never in fact discovered any document written in this point situated between the civilizations of the Middle East and that of the Indus which, at that time, had a fixed writing system. . .. It is also from Tepe-Hissar that come the compartmentalized copper seals with a small handle on the back. Appearing rarely from the first city levels, they will be found during its reconstructions in greater numbers side by side with the traditional stone seals.” (La Civilisation d l’Indus et ses enigmes [The Indus Civilization and its Puzzles] 1969, p. 68)
Asko Parpola in his overview Seals and Sealing in the Ancient World (2018, p. 130-131) discusses the Pre-Harappan Phase ca. 3500-3000 BCE in the evolution of Indus seals types and motifs: “For the Pre-Harappan and the first part of the Early Harappan Phase this sketch is based on Akinori Uesugi’s recent paper (2011). During the latter half of the fourth millennium BCE the regional cultures of the Greater Indus Valley reached a high level of development, and interregional interaction began. Round, square and rectangular button seals with geometric motifs and two holes in the middle for threading [see round seal above] are attested from Mehrgarh IV [3500-3000 BCE] and V [3000-2750 BCE] in Baluchistan. They have close parallels on the Iranian Plateau, especially at Shahr-i Sokhta II [2800-2500 BCE] in Seistan [Iran] and at Mundigak III in southern Afghanistan. One (broken) bone seal of this type (H-1521) comes from Harappa I.
“An ivory seal from Rahman Dheri IB [3000-2750 BCE] has two holes in the middle but figurative motifs (including a pair of scorpions). The early seals at Mehrgarh were found in compounds dedicated to crafts activities and possible storage (Frenez 2004); this is compatible with the evidence of the earliest seals from Harappa (Meadows and Kenoyer 2010).”
Image 2: Seals from different levels. A Stone seals. B Copper seals. (Casal, Fouilles De Mundigak, 1961)
The wide variety of seals found at Mundigak, mainly stone but also some copper, have deep material and stylistic connections with Central Asia (see two bronze Mundigak seals), and, towards the south-east, with sites recently found in Iran from between 4500 and 1900 BCE in the Jazmurian Valley, Iran. “In this period, the main ceramic comparisons concerning Eastern Jazmurian are with Shahr-i Sokhta III-IV and Mundigak IV.3 . . .” write authors Muhammad Heydari, Francois Desset and Massimo Vidale in the article Bronze Age Glyptics of Eastern Jazmurian, Iran. Similar motifs include “wavy lines” [Image 1, compare Image 5, above].
While similar design motifs do of course suggest interaction, the authors also say something about the specificity of Jazmurian seals that may hold for those from Mundigak as well; seals may have facilitated trade, but may also have had specific functions internal to a culture, town or city, perhaps more so in the earlier periods of seal manufacture: “Such apparent regional ‘seclusion’ of SEJ [Jazmurian] stamps contrasts with the general evidence of connectivity revealed by ceramics and the much-discussed trade in rare valuable commodities among various regions of Middle and South Asia in the Early Bronze Age. The picture of a local style and possibly local production—if confirmed by additional data—might suggest that these seals were involved in some form of elite economical or ceremonial activities, rather than in long-distance communication and exchange (but the fragmented, episodical nature of the record suggests that these hypotheses should be considered with caution)” (p. 150).
Images
1. A stone button seal from Mundigak Period IV (2750-2500 BCE).
2. A stone button seal from Period IV (2750-2500 BCE). Note the possible pipal leaf motifs near the edge halfway down each side.
3. Among the earliest stone disc seals found at Mundigak, this is dated to Period II, 3250-2750 BCE.
4. Stone seal from an unknown period.
5. Copper stamp seals from Spidej, Chegerdak and Keshik. Drawings and photos by F. Desset.
Note: the crescents in images 1-4 are reflections from the glass.
“Two massive mud brick stepped buildings of the mid 3rd millennium BC were actually excavated, one at Tureng Tepe in the Gorgan plain (north-eastern Iran, Deshayes 1997) and a better preserved one at Mundigak in the Kandahar province of Afghanistan (Casal 1961; Dumarçay 1984),” writes Massimo Vidale in the superb article Protohistory of the vara. Exploring the Proto-Indo-Iranian Background of an Early Mytheme of the Iranian Plateau. “Both were badly eroded. The terraces of Tureng Tepe were probably embellished by semi-pillars, and in the main level at Mundigak (Image 1) rows of semi-columns painted red were crowned with an irregular frieze of stepped mudbricks creating chains of crosses or lozenges. Quite similar patterns (crosses or stepped triangles) feature, on the chlorite vessels, aside rows of possible semi- columns and hut designs (compare Images 2, 3 and 4 with Image 1; other illustrations in Hakemi 1990). That both the stone pots and the massive stepped building so far excavated took inspiration from similar architectural templates seems plausible” (pp. 9-10).
Images
1. Graphic reconstruction of the façade of the stepped building of Mundigak (Kandahar, Afghanistan), very similar to the upper frieze of the chlorite vessels of 2 and 3. From Dumarçay 1984.
2. A cylindrical pot in chlorite decorated with the ‘hut’ motif at the Jiroft Museum. Photo M. Vidale.
3. An elaborated cylindrical vessel in chlorite with ‘hut’ designs combined with other geometrical motives, suggesting two and probably three superimposed storeys (or concentric ring-like sections). Graphic reconstruction by Sedijeh Piran; from Madjidzadeh 2003.
4. Another elaborated cylindrical vessel in chlorite with ‘hut’ and other geometrical motives arranged in two superimposed friezes, at the Jiroft Museum. Note the few surviving inlays in white shell and the geometrical pattern on the upper frieze, very similar to the façade of the stepped building of Mundigak. Photo M. Vidale.
A humped bull figurine, similar to ones also found in Sohr Damb/Nal in Balochistan, with which Mundigak also shared burial customs in Period III [3400-2900 BCE].
Casal writes, after discussing the caprid [goat] types found on tasting glasses “Among the Iranian sites, those in the northeast are not the only ones with which Mundigak is in contact. . It is in the Susa region [western Iran] that we must look for inspiration, where the style of Susa II [c. 3900-3100 BCE] offered the same treatment of the body of animals to the period of the Archaic Dynastic II. If the style of Quetta [Balochistan], characteristic in Mundigak of the previous period and inspired by the style of Susa I [c. 4200–3900 BCE] is still maintained in the decoration of certain vessels, it is therefore new currents from the same region which now predominate, proof that the contacts with the Susa were a constant in Mundigak’s commercial life. The influence of Susa is not limited to Afghanistan. It extends to the north of Pakistan where American excavations have found, in the very region of Quetta, the same process of replacing the geometric style with a decoration in which animals with elongated bodies appear. But here the decor becomes Indian; it is no longer the caprids dear to Iranian art, but above all bovids which are represented and more specifically the humped bull.” (La Civilisation d l’Indus et ses enigmes [The Indus Civilization and its Puzzles], 1969, p. 68)
Jean-Marie Casal writes “Note also that, during their occupation, the first occupants of Mundigak [which he thought were nomads around 4500 BCE, but now is dated more towards 4000 BCE] already how to make use of copper, the evidence for which was the discovery in the deepest layer of small hammered blades. They knew how to spin [cloth], for spindle whorls were found at the same levels. As for the bone needles, they were probably used to sew animal skins. Likewise, clay statues representing a humpback bull indicate that from the outset, a fertility cult with which the bull is generally associated was also present.”
Petrie and Shaffer add “Only four figurines, of humped bulls, were found in Sub-Periods I3–5 [4000-3500 BCE]. Casal stated that such figurines increased in frequency during Period II, but no quantification was given.” (The Archaeology of Afghanistan (2019, pp. 223).
For Casal this meant that “one can see distinct indications which link Mundigak to the Indian world in the significant number of figurines of bull which were found on all levels.” (La Civilisation d l’Indus et ses enigmes, 1969, p. 61, 65)
“For analogies to the distinctive Kulli cattle we may turn northward to Mundigak,” writes Sir Mortimer Wheeler in The Indus Civilization “where Period IV (succeeding the ‘Quetta ware’ of Period III) is marked by elongated animals (oxen, goats or ibexes, felines) and birds, all with the distinctive dot-in-circle eyes and hatched bodies, buth with the environing ‘landscape’ which occurs at Kulli. Some measure of affinity nevertheless seems sufficiently certain. Far in the opposite direction, in the sheikhdom of Abu Dhabi on the coast of the Oman peninsula, the Danes have excavated on the tiny island of Umm an-Nar tumuli representing circular multiple tombs of masonry containing pottery of which one vessel bears elongated bulls separated by geometric panels, a pattern which, it is claimed ‘shows both in form and in style of decoration so great a resemblance’ to Kulli ware that ‘there appears to be no doubt’ that it belongs to the same period. This resemblance, it now appears, must be regarded as very uncertain; but some evidence of trade across the Persian Gulf is provided by a grey-ware canister of distinctive Kulli form, with forward-tumbling caprids, horned heads and triangles, found by the Danes at Buraimi, in the interior of Oman.” (1962, p. 17)
Image 2: Bottom portion of Figures Ceramic from Period IV [2750-2500 BCE] from Casal, Fouilles De Mundigak, Fig. 62, 1961.
Casal writes: “Thus, on these tasting glasses then so fashionable, we see represented caprids, in particular, with the elongated body and covered with hatching, whose eye is represented by a point in the middle of a large circle, and drawn birds with the same style.” (La Civilisation d l’Indus et ses enigmes [The Indus Civilization and its Puzzles] p. 68, 1969).
Image 2: Top portion of Figures Ceramic from Period IV [2900-2400 BCE] (from Casal, Fouilles De Mundigak, Fig. 62, 1961).