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Concept
Gandhara grave culture
Summary
The Gandhara grave culture of present-day Pakistan is known by its "protohistoric graves", which were spread mainly in the middle Swat River valley and named the Swat Protohistoric Graveyards Complex, dated in that region to c. 1200–800 BCE. The Italian Archaeological Mission to Pakistan (MAIP) holds that there are no burials with these features after 800 BCE. Recent research by Pakistani scholars, such as Muhammad Zahir, consider that these protohistoric graves extended over a much wider geography and continued in existence from the 8th century BCE until the historic period. The core region was in the middle of the Swat River course and expanded to the valleys of Dir, Kunar, Chitral, and Peshawar. Protohistoric graves were present in north, central, and southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province as well as in north-western tribal areas, including Gilgit-Baltistan province, Taxila, and Salt Range in Punjab, Pakistan, along with their presence in Indian Kashmir, Ladakh, and Uttarakhand.
The grave culture has been regarded as a token of the Indo-Aryan migrations but has also been explained by local cultural continuity. Estimates, based on ancient DNA analyses, suggest ancestors of middle Swat valley people mixed with a population coming from the Inner Asian Mountain Corridor, which carried Steppe ancestry, sometime between 1900 and 1500 BCE.
Close to the end of the second millennium BCE, large graveyards appear in northern Gandhara (middle Swat River valley), featuring mainly inhumations (c. 1200–900 BCE), the so-called Gandhara grave culture by earlier scholars, a period in which iron technology was introduced. These graveyard types expanded to the northwest into Chitral, around Singoor, featuring burial traditions similar to protohistoric graves between the 8th century BCE and 17th century CE.
A constant funeral tradition with pottery and similar artifacts can be found along the banks of the Swat and Dir rivers in the north, Chitral, and the Vale of Peshawar. Simply-made terracotta figurines were buried with the pottery, and other items are decorated with simple dot designs.
Official source
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