The Archaeological Landscape of the Right Bank of the River Indus and the Khirthar Piedmont: A Synthesis from Larkana and Kambar–Shahdad Kot Districts, Sindh, Pakistan

Abstract

This paper presents a focused synthesis of archaeological evidence recovered from two ecologically distinct but interlinked zones of western Sindh, Pakistan: the right (western) bank of the River Indus in Larkana District, and the Khirthar hilly piedmont straddling the Sindh–Balochistan border in Kambar–Shahdad Kot District. Drawing on an intensive field survey that documented 32 previously unrecorded or re-examined sites, the study restricts its scope to the right-bank palaeo-channel, plains and lake-catchment sites and to the piedmont settlements of the Khirthar foothills, deliberately excluding sites of the eastern (left) bank. The right-bank plains preserve a dense cluster of mounded settlements including Aavey-Jo-Daro, Ilyas Muhammad, Nathar-Jo-Daro, Chotiyaro-Jo-Daro, Pir Nandal Shah, Dhamrah-Jo-Daro, Halepotan-Jo-Daro, Thikrian-Waro-Daro, Fateh Bilawal, Jhukar-Jo-Daro, Chanaran-Jo-Muqam, Janan Chan, Nang Daro, Karonhar-Jo-Daro, Dandheray-Jo-Daro and Khando-Jo-Muqam  that together attest an occupation sequence from the Mature/Late Indus period through a distinctive local Black Ware and Red Ware ceramic horizon of the second millennium BCE. In the submerged margins of Hamal Lake, the Bahawal Shah, Badam-Jo-Daro, Punro, Soan Taro and Whareh-Jo-Daro clusters furnish some of the earliest evidence in the region for Chaff-Tempered Neolithic pottery alongside a dense concentration of post-Indus Black Ware and Red Ware. In the Khirthar piedmont, the sites of Toopi, Mugli, Kotero and Karo Kotero yield a stratified admixture of Hakra, Nal, Amrian, Kot Dijian, Quetta/Faiz Muhammad Grey Ware and Mature Indus material, marking this corridor as a formative contact zone between the Balochistan highlands and the Indus lowlands. The paper re-examines these findings against the broader chronological framework of the Regionalization and Localization Eras and situates them within current (2025–2026) archaeological scholarship on the Indus Valley Civilization, including newly revised radiocarbon chronologies for Mohenjo-daro and ongoing geomorphological reconstruction of the Indus's palaeo-courses west of the river. The results argue that the right-bank/piedmont corridor functioned as a persistent cultural threshold linking Balochi and Sindhi traditions from the Neolithic to the threshold of the second urbanisation, and that its systematic under-representation in earlier regional surveys has left a recoverable, and now partly recovered, gap in the settlement history of Sindh.