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Counter-intuitive influence of Himalayan river morphodynamics on Indus Civilisation urban settlements

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Date
28/11/2017
Author
Singh, Ajit
Thomsen, Kristina J.
Sinha, Rajiv
Buylaert, Jan-Pieter
Carter, Andrew
Mark, Darren F.
Mason, Philippa J.
Densmore, Alexander L.
Murray, Andrew S.
Jain, Mayank
Paul, Debajyoti
Gupta, Sanjeev
Keywords
GE Environmental Sciences
QE Geology
DAS
Metadata
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Abstract
Urbanism in the Bronze-age Indus Civilisation (~4.6–3.9 thousand years before the present, ka) has been linked to water resources provided by large Himalayan river systems, although the largest concentrations of urban-scale Indus settlements are located far from extant Himalayan rivers. Here we analyse the sedimentary architecture, chronology and provenance of a major palaeochannel associated with many of these settlements. We show that the palaeochannel is a former course of the Sutlej River, the third largest of the present-day Himalayan rivers. Using optically stimulated luminescence dating of sand grains, we demonstrate that flow of the Sutlej in this course terminated considerably earlier than Indus occupation, with diversion to its present course complete shortly after ~8 ka. Indus urban settlements thus developed along an abandoned river valley rather than an active Himalayan river. Confinement of the Sutlej to its present incised course after ~8 ka likely reduced its propensity to re-route frequently thus enabling long-term stability for Indus settlements sited along the relict palaeochannel.
Citation
Singh , A , Thomsen , K J , Sinha , R , Buylaert , J-P , Carter , A , Mark , D F , Mason , P J , Densmore , A L , Murray , A S , Jain , M , Paul , D & Gupta , S 2017 , ' Counter-intuitive influence of Himalayan river morphodynamics on Indus Civilisation urban settlements ' , Nature Communications , vol. 8 , 1617 . https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-01643-9
Publication
Nature Communications
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-01643-9
ISSN
2041-1723
Type
Journal article
Rights
© The Author(s) 2017. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Description
We acknowledge seed grants from the Leverhulme Trust, Royal Society and UKIERI. Natural Environment Research Council Argon Isotope Facility grant IP-1267-1111 funded the argon analyses. A.S. was supported by a IIT-K PhD fellowship. J-P.B. receives funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme ERC-2014-StG 639904 – RELOS.
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  • University of St Andrews Research
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/12303

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