Cemetery H culture

The Cemetery H culture was a culture from the Bronze Age that lived in the Punjab region in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent. It existed from about 1900 BCE until about 1300 BCE.

This culture is seen as a regional form of the later part of the Harappan, also known as the Indus Valley civilisation. It is also linked to the movements of people from the Indo-Aryan groups.

The culture gets its name from a special cemetery where many of its people were buried. This helps historians learn about their way of life and traditions.

Origins

The Cemetery H culture was found in the Punjab region in parts of modern-day Pakistan and India. It was named after a cemetery in "area H" at Harappa. This culture existed from about 1900 BCE to about 1300 BCE.

It grew out of the northern part of the Indus Valley civilization around 1700 BCE. Some believe it shows changes in how people lived rather than big events like invasions or cities being left empty. This culture may also be linked to movements of people from places like Swat culture, and together with other cultures, it may have helped shape what later became known as the Vedic civilization.

Features

The Cemetery H culture had some unique ways of doing things. One big difference from the earlier Indus Valley people was how they handled human remains — they burned the bodies and kept the bones in special painted clay pots called burial urns. These urns were often decorated with pictures of animals like antelopes and peacocks, as well as symbols like the sun and stars.

During this time, people also started growing more rice, and their towns spread further to the east. They still used mud bricks to build their homes, but they didn’t trade as much with distant places as the Indus Valley people once did. Some of the designs on the burial pots show animals and symbols that might connect to early religious ideas, but there isn’t strong proof that these people destroyed the older Indus cities.

Archaeology

Cremation, or burning bodies after death, began in the Cemetery H culture in India. This practice is mentioned in ancient texts called the Vedas. One of these texts, the Rigveda, talks about both cremated and uncremated ancestors in RV 10.15.14.