RAKHIGARHI EXPEDITION

RAKHIGARHI FIELD EXPEDITION

A First-Hand Account by Ujjwal B U Pant, Founder AINCERT

"To understand ancient coinage, one must first understand where it began. Rakhigarhi is that beginning."

About Rakhigarhi

Rakhigarhi, located in Hisar district, Haryana, is the largest known site of the Indus Valley Civilisation in India and possibly the world. Spanning 12 mounds across several kilometres, it predates even Mohenjo-daro in some layers.

Dating back to approximately 2600–1900 BC, Rakhigarhi was a thriving urban centre of the mature Harappan phase with planned streets, advanced drainage, standardised weights and a sophisticated trade economy that used gold, silver and terracotta objects as proto-monetary exchange items.

The AINCERT Field Visit

Site: Rakhigarhi, Hisar, Haryana, India
Mounds visited: 2 of 12
Personnel on site: 500+ ASI archaeologists, researchers and excavation workers
Conducted by: Archaeological Survey of India (ASI)

During this visit, AINCERT founder Ujjwal B U Pant personally documented the active excavation observing professional archaeological methodology firsthand.

Key Observations

🟡 Gold Etched Quartz Bead Discovery
During the visit, ASI excavators recovered a gold etched quartz bead weighing approximately 0.15 grams from a depth of approximately 10 feet within the excavation layer. This was witnessed directly by Ujjwal B U Pant and immediately reported to the ASI team on site.

Gold etched quartz beads of this type are considered proto-monetary objects used as value stores and exchange items in IVC trade networks connecting India to Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf. This find directly supports the proto-coinage argument developed in Ancient Treasures Part 3.

📸 40+ Artifacts Documented
Over 40 artifacts were personally photographed including:

Trade weights (standardised key proto-coinage evidence)
Pottery fragments
Terracotta objects
Skeletal remains from excavated layers

🪨 5 Specimens Collected - Mound RGR-3
Five stone and terracotta specimens were collected from Mound RGR-3, subsequently cleaned, individually bagged and labelled for The Pant Museum archive.

Connection to Indian Numismatics

The Rakhigarhi evidence is central to understanding proto-coinage in India:

Standardised trade weights found here prove a regulated exchange system existed 1,000 years before the first punch-marked coins
Gold ring-money disks and etched beads served as value objects in lieu of coined money
The civilisation's collapse (~1900 BC) and eastward migration toward the Gangetic plain directly connects to the emergence of the Mahajanapadas and karshapana coinage (~600 BC)

This is the missing link between prehistoric barter and India's first true coins and AINCERT has documented it firsthand.

Specimens in The Pant Museum Archive

Specimen

Source

Material

Status

RGR-3/01

Mound RGR-3

Stone

Cleaned, bagged, labelled

RGR-3/02

Mound RGR-3

Terracotta

Cleaned, bagged, labelled

RGR-3/03

Mound RGR-3

Stone

Cleaned, bagged, labelled

RGR-3/04

Mound RGR-3

Terracotta

Cleaned, bagged, labelled

RGR-3/05

Mound RGR-3

Stone

Cleaned, bagged, labelled

Field Notes

"Standing on Mound RGR-3 at Rakhigarhi watching ASI excavators carefully brush away 4,000 years of soil and then witnessing a gold etched quartz bead emerge from 10 feet below the surface was a moment I will never forget. This is why numismatics matters. The coin doesn't begin at the mint. It begins here in the ground, in the trade weight, in the bead."

— Ujjwal B U Pant, AINCERT-001, Founder

All specimens from Mound RGR-3 are preserved in The Pant Museum archive pending formal establishment of the AINS Numismatic Sciences Campus.