This project supports travel and field expenses for a team of U.S. scientists headed by Dr. Gregory Possehl from the University Museum, the University of Pennsylvania, with logistical and technical backing of an Indian team, to conduct archeological research at the Harappan site of Babar Kot in the State of Gujarat in India. The research is expected to continue over four seasons of excavation. The Gujarat State Department of Archeology will provide the local support. The site is strategically located between Rojdi and the major Urban Phase Harappan settlements of Rangpur and Lothal. The mound is approximately three meters high, one of the few stratified Harappan sites in Saurashtra, and about 2.66 hectares in size. Save for surface plowing, Babar Kot is undesturbed. The research design at Babar Kot is based on two theoretical issues: those of relevance to understanding the complex societies generally, and those relevant to understanding the Harappan civilization. Given the vrtually total lack of historical record for the Harappan Civilization, the route planned in this work is to study the spatial patterning, including the distribution of physical remains (artifacts, architecture, settlements) as well as the way they went about doing things (subsistence systems, trading relations, cultural ecology). Scope: This project is a major collaborative undertaking between U.S. and Indian scientists in archeological research in an area of great scientific interest. The costs of the research are shared by the two teams. The size of the undertaking is in this case an indication of the potential for improving our understanding of the Harappan Civilization, based on the sucess achieved in earlier excavations by the two teams in the area.
