One of the advantages of Harappa, when compared with most sites of the Indus civilization, is the knowledge gained of the people themselves from the excavation of cemeteries. Cemetery R37b belongs to Period III and was first investigated in 1937. Subsequent excavations by archaeologists from the University of California have added to the number of individuals available for consideration. While many skeletons were fragmentary, enough were complete to permit some conclusions about the health and status of the inhabitants of Harappa. Among the first considerations of any such analysis are the ratio of men to women and the mortality figures expressed as the approximate age of death. At Harappa, females outnumbered males in the samples from both major investigations of the cemetery, but many skeletons were too fragmentary for diagnosis. Of 90 individuals for whom the age at death could be identified, 13 survived beyond an age of about 55 years. Twenty-seven died when between about 35 and 55 years of age, but 35, more than a third of the sample, died between the ages of 17 and 34. Fifteen died before reaching 16 years. Compared with that of most prehistoric communities, there is a low incidence of infant and child mortality. This might well reflect the fragility of infant bones and therefore their smaller chance of survival, or perhaps infants were interred in another part of the cemetery. Teeth are a basic source of information on the health of a population, because diet, illness, and malnutrition are expressed in teeth in a number of ways. The Harappan population, for example, shows that 70 percent of individuals suffered from linear dental hypoplasia, which is a result of dietary deficiency or illness during the period of tooth formation. This figure is higher than those for the earlier population of mehrgarh. The frequency of caries was also markedly higher at Harappa than at Mehrgarh, probably as a result of different methods of processing food and a greater reliance on cultivated cereals. Interestingly, girls revealed poorer dental health than boys, while even among adults, women exhibited more caries than men. This may be due to different eating habits, with women eating at shorter intervals. The investigators of the cemetery population have also suggested that boys may have been preferred to girls and that they received more attention as they developed.
World History
