ISLAMABAD: Archaeologists working at the ancient site of Mohenjo-Daro have resumed excavations aimed at better understanding the city’s early development, including the structure and chronology of a massive perimeter wall first identified more than seven decades ago, officials said on Saturday.
The latest excavation season, launched in late December, is part of a joint Pakistani-US research effort approved by the Technical Consultative Committee of the National Fund for Mohenjo-Daro, which met at the site this week to review conservation and research priorities. The work focuses on reassessing the city’s defensive architecture and early occupation layers through controlled excavation and carbon dating.
Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, a senior archaeologist involved in the project, told the committee that the excavation targets a section of the city wall originally uncovered by British archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler in 1950.
“This wall was over seven meters wide and built in multiple phases, reaching a height of approximately seven meters,” Kenoyer said, according to an official statement circulated after the meeting. “The lowest part of the wall appears to have been constructed during the early Harappan period, around 2800 BC.”
