Bronze Age · c. 2700–2200 BC · Mohenjo-daro, Sindh, Pakistan
Radiocarbon dates suggest Mohenjo-daro in Pakistan had a city wall before 2600 BC
A mudbrick structure that Mortimer Wheeler took for a flood embankment now appears to be a city wall begun around 2700–2600 BC, over an even older Early Harappan settlement.
Official announcement
Mohenjo-daro, Pakistan New excavations at Mohenjo-daro show that the Indus Valley city was already occupied in the Early Harappan, or Kot Diji, phase. The site is in Sindh, Pakistan. The Early Harappan phase ran from roughly 3300–2600 BC, before the great cities of the Indus Civilisation.
The team radiocarbon dated a massive mudbrick structure, which it interprets as a city wall. The dates place the wall's first phase at around 2700–2600 BC. That is about a century before the classic urban phase is usually said to begin.
A joint Pakistani and international team did the work in 2025 and 2026. It was led by Dr Asma Ibrahim, Ali Lashari and Dr Jonathan Mark Kenoyer. This account comes from reporting by the Pakistani newspaper Dawn, as summarised by Arkeonews.
So far the results have been reported only in the press. No published paper has been cited.
Wheeler's flood embankment, dug in 1950, looked at again
The team worked in the area west of the Stupa Mound, the raised part of the site. There it returned to a large mudbrick structure that Sir Mortimer Wheeler first excavated in 1950. Wheeler interpreted it as an embankment built to hold back floods.
The new excavators studied the layers of the structure in detail. They also radiocarbon dated five new samples. Radiocarbon dating measures how much of the carbon-14 in once-living material, such as charcoal, has decayed. This gives an estimate of when the organism died.
On this evidence, the team interprets the structure as a city wall. In its reading, the wall was built in several phases and enlarged over centuries. The team does not see it as a purely defensive or hydraulic work.
Pottery and carbon samples from the lowest levels date the earliest phase of the wall to around 2700–2600 BC, at the very end of the Early Harappan period. The upper levels belong to the Mature Harappan period, after 2600 BC, when the city was at its height. The wall was extended, strengthened and maintained until at least 2200 BC. It may have been kept up later still.
Deep cores below the wall brought up pottery in the Kot Diji style. The team takes this as evidence of a substantial settlement older than the wall itself. If that reading holds, Mohenjo-daro grew out of an existing community. It was not laid out from nothing at the start of the Mature Harappan phase.
Arkeonews notes that this fits with findings at Harappa, another major Indus city. There, early fortifications and occupation layers date to a similar time.
Indus cities may have grown in stages
Mohenjo-daro lies beside the Indus River in Larkana district. It covers more than 620 acres (about 250 hectares). Its population at its peak is estimated at up to 40,000 people. That puts it among the largest cities of the Bronze Age, on a scale with cities in Egypt and Mesopotamia.
The city is known for standardised baked bricks, planned streets and drains. It also has large buildings such as the Great Bath. The Great Bath is often interpreted as having a ritual or civic role.
The usual account has Indus cities appearing fairly suddenly around 2600 BC. The archaeologists involved describe the new dates as a significant step in understanding how urban life developed in the Indus Valley.
They say the evidence points to a growth in several phases. In this view, earlier communities built up the social, economic and architectural systems of the later cities over time.
No readable texts say when or why the wall was built. The Indus script, found on seals and tablets across the site, has never been deciphered. The wall's history has to be reconstructed from the buildings, the finds in each layer and scientific dating.
The site was also used long after the Indus Civilisation declined. In 2023, excavations near the Stupa area found hundreds of Kushan-era coins of the 2nd to 5th centuries AD. Together they weigh about 5.5 kilograms. They are fused together so tightly that an exact count has been difficult.
The team plans further excavation to trace the full circuit of the wall around the Stupa Mound. In particular, it wants to find the wall's gateways. These could show how people and goods moved in and out of the city.
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