Lothal and the dock debate
Lothal, Ahmedabad district, Gujarat
A small Harappan town near the Gulf of Khambhat, with a large brick basin its excavator called a dockyard and others read as a reservoir.
S. R. Rao excavated Lothal from 1955 to 1960. Beside the town lay a brick-lined basin more than 200 m long with an inlet channel and a spillway, which he identified as a tidal dock reached from the Sabarmati and Bhogavo rivers. Around it were a warehouse platform, a workshop making carnelian beads, and a seal of the Persian Gulf type.
The dock is contested. In 1968 Lawrence Leshnik argued that the basin was a freshwater reservoir, and later studies have gone both ways. Either reading shows the Harappan reach into Gujarat and towards the sea; the range shown is Lothal's Harappan phase.
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