Large buildings that do not appear to be domestic in nature have been identified at Mohenjo-daro as well as at Harappa. The famous Great Bath of Mohenjo-daro may have been used for public rituals and consists of a specially constructed water tank (12 m north-south and 7 m wide, with a maximum depth of 2.4 m), surrounded by a colonnade with entries at both ends. Smaller rooms, one of which contains a well, are located on the eastern side of the tank, and may have been used for visitors or for storage. Just to the north of this tank are eight small rooms with bathing platforms, where people may have cleansed themselves before coming to the main tank for special rituals.
To the southwest of the Great-Bath is the so-called Granary, which consists of a monumental brick foundation (50 m east-west and 27 m north-south) with narrow passageways and sockets for holding what may have been a wooden superstructure. Although it is referred to as a granary, there is no archaeological evidence for the storage of grain in this building. Its precise function may never be known, but it was clearly an impressive monumental building or public hall in a prominent area of the city.
At Harappa a monumental building complex, also mistakenly called a ‘granary’, has been the focus of recent excavations in an attempt to determine its precise function. This structure was originally constructed on a massive mud-brick platform with fired brick facing (50 m north-south and 40 m east-west). Two rows of six long rectangular rooms were separated by a central passageway. These rooms had brick foundations and narrow hollow floors, and were thought to have been used for storage of grain. Careful analysis of several unexcavated portions of this structure in 1997 did not reveal any evidence of storage vessels, or grain and the precise function is still unknown. When it was first excavated in the 1930s, it was thought to be associated with equally enigmatic circular working platforms interpreted as grainprocessing areas and located to the north of the ‘granary’ New excavations and radiocarbon dating have shown that the circular working platforms were not used for processing grain and that they date some 200 years after the so-called ‘granary’ was constructed. The precise function of these circular platforms is still being investigated.
Recent excavations at the site of Dholavira have found large buildings in the highest citadel area of the site, but once again there is no conclusive evidence for their function during the Harappan period. The excavators suggest that they may have been administrative or ritual structures that were eventually abandoned and reused by later inhabitants.
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