Rakhigarhi

Rakhigarhi or Rakhi Garhi is a village and an archaeological site in the Hisar District of the northern Indian state of Haryana, situated about 150 km northwest of Delhi. It is located in the Ghaggar River plain, some 27 km from the seasonal Ghaggar river, and belonged to the Indus Valley civilisation, being part of the pre-Harappan (6000?/4600-3300 BCE), early Harappan (3300-2600 BCE), and the mature phase (2600-1900 BCE) of the Indus Valley Civilisation.

It was one of the five largest settlements of the ancient civilisation, with most scholars prior to 2014 reporting it to have been between 80 hectares and 100+ hectares in area, comprising five closely-integrated archaeological mounds as the extent of mature-phase urban habitations. A sixth mound situated in the vicinity, but outside of this group, represented a distinct older period and was likely a separate settlement, while a seventh mound was a cemetery or burial ground belonging to the mature phase. The discovery of two more mounds (in addition to the seven that were already known)—respecitvely situated approximately 1 km north/east and 1 km south/west of the main group of mounds—was made in 2014: it consequently was claimed by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) that the discovery made Rakhigarhi the largest-known site of the Harappan civilisation, with the spread of archaeological remains being encompassed within a total area of 300 to 350 hectares. However, this figure includes outlying remains which were likely not all integrated as part of a single urban settlement at any singular time.

Initial excavations at the site happened in the 1960s, followed by further excavations in the late 1990s, however more sustained excavations have taken place in the past decade. though much of the area is yet to be excavated and published. Other related excavation sites in the area are Mitathal and the smaller site Lohari Ragho, which are still awaiting excavation.

The conduct of digs by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), including at Rakhigarhi, has come under criticism for being like a "zamindari" system wherein "the individual excavation director" "had nearly dictatorial control over the material excavated", and questions are being raised about the scientific quality of the ASI's excavations of a number of Harappan sites. Scholarly interpretation of Rakhigarhi, as with a number of other archaeological sites of ancient India, has been subject to contestation regarding the methodologies and ideology of the ASI: many senior officials of the ASI have been "embroiled in controversies" over pseudo-"scientific" efforts to legitimise the Hindutva ideology which identifies the ancient Harappans (incorrectly) with the Vedas and Sanskrit, in order to synthesize the nationalist narrative of Indian civilisation as indigenous and continuous since its beginning, allegedly originating from the banks of the Saraswati River (rather than the Indus).

DNA-tests by Shinde et al. (2019) on a single skeleton show that the DNA did not include any traces of steppe ancestry, in line with the Aryan migration theory, which says that Indo-Aryans migrated to India from the steppes after the Harappan civilisation had started to disintegrate.