Archaeologists from the Deccan College Deemed University in Pune have discovered two skeletons, a young male and a female, buried at the same time in the same grave with the man’s face turned toward the woman.
It is the first anthropologically confirmed joint burial of a couple in a Harappan cemetery. The 'couple's grave' was found in the Harappan settlements excavated at Rakhigarhi in Haryana, some 150km northwest of Delhi.
Archaeologists said evidence points at the couple being buried simultaneously or about the same time. They could not find clear evidence if one was buried after the other.
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Although many settlements and cemeteries have been discovered and investigated, no couple's burials at Harappan cemeteries have been reported till date. Archaeologists who excavated this site found the two bodies placed in the supine position (face up) with arms and legs extended.
The discovery of couple's burial sites has often sparked interest among archaeologists. The recent findings by the Deccan College Deemed University team have been published in the peer-reviewed international journal ACB journal of Anatomy and Cell Biology.
The excavation and analysis were undertaken by the department of archaeology of the Deccan College Deemed University and the Institute of Forensic Science, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea.
Vasant Shinde, corresponding author of the research, and vice chancellor of Deccan College Deemed University, told TOI that archaeologists in India have often debated about the historical meaning of joint burials.
He said the Harappans believed in life after death which explains the pottery and bowls found in the graves. “The pots may have contained food and water for the dead, a custom probably fuelled by the belief that the dead may need them after death. Hence, the contemporary view of life after death may actually be as old as 5,000 years,” Shinde added.
In the past, a Harappan joint burial discovered at Lothal was regarded as a ‘probable’ instance of a widow's self-sacrifice as an expression of the grief over her husband's death, he said.
“Other archaeologists claimed it was difficult to estimate the sexes of the individuals, and they may not have been a couple. Other than the contentious Lothal case, none of the joint burials reported from Harappan cemeteries till date have been anthropologically confirmed to be a couple’s grave,” he said.
The manner in which the individuals had been buried—with the male’s face towards the female—could commemorate lasting affection even after death.
“We can only infer, but those who buried the two individuals may have wanted to imply that the love between the two would continue even after death,” he said.
Shinde said rarer types of joint graves have been found in Harappan cemeteries, but there has not been one instance of a couple's grave reported till date.
“A couple’s joint grave is not so rare in other ancient civilizations. Yet, it is strange that they were not discovered in Harappan cemeteries till now,” he said.
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The grave had burial pottery and a banded agate bead, probably part of a necklace. It was found near the right collar bone of the woman’s skeleton.
Both skeletons were brought to the laboratory of the Deccan College for analysis after the field surveys were completed. Each skeleton’s sex was determined after studying the pelvic region.
“A narrow greater sciatic notch and the absence of a preauricular sulcus is indicative of the male anatomy and a wider greater sciatic notch and the presence of a preauricular sulcus is that of a female. More such features during the analysis helped us determine the sex of each skeleton,” Shinde added.
Their ages at the time of death have been estimated to be between 21 and 35 years and the man’s approximate height as 5 feet 6 inches and the woman’s as 5 feet 2 inches. Researchers could not find any evidence of trauma or lesions in the skeletons.
“We also did not find any evidence that such a grave could have been a result of any ‘sati-like’ custom. Among the 62 graves in the Rakhigarhi cemetery, only this one grave was identified as a couple's burial. It was not an outcome of any specific funeral custom commonly performed then. It is more plausible that two individuals died at the same time or almost the same time, and were buried together in the same grave,” Shinde said.