Rural Landscapes to Proto-Urban Systems: Adaptation and Settlement Transformation in Western India from the 4th to 3rd Millennium BC

Shweta Sinha Deshpande* and Esha Prasad

The origins and developmental trajectories of urbanism continue as one of the ‘grand challenges’ in contemporary global archaeology, and India’s Protohistory. The Harappan civilization is associated with the first “urban revolutions” and state formations of the fourth and third millennium BC. The contemporary Chalcolithic communities, such as Ahar and Ganeshwar-Jodhpura cultures with sites like Gilund, Ahar, Balathal, Pachamta, Ganeshwar, Jodhpura, Bansiyal etc., are on the other hand understood as its binary opposite, rural settlements fundamentally agrarian in nature. Limited attention is given to the processes and interactions among these, except as sources of particular resources, especially copper and steatite. Recent scholarship has moved beyond the abrupt, compact, centralized models developed in the twentieth century to explain civilization. The Indian case, particularly the rise of early cities or urban systems beyond the Harappan civilization, remains to be firmly situated within global archaeology. There is therefore a need to examine Chalcolithic settlements as interconnected systems, sustained through interactions, contributing to the processes of urbanization. Is it possible, therefore, to understand these sites as spaces of interaction among people and institutions such as trade, political networks, ritual practices, craft specialization, and emerging social hierarchies? The rise of urban settlements may be understood less as the outcome of institutional and infrastructural development and more as the product of social interaction, interactive systems, and networks of people. By adopting a longue durée macro perspective, the paper examines transformations from ruralised landscapes to proto-urban systems in western India between the fifth and third millennia.