Rakhigarhi to be developed as iconic site in Haryana :
1. It is biggest Harappan settlement spread over 550 hectares and is ‘more important than Harappa, Mohenjo Daro’. Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s announcement during the presentation of today’s Union Budget that Rakhigarhi would be developed as an iconic site has been well received in Haryana.
2. Rakhigarhi in Hisar, one of the five archaeological sites to be developed as iconic sites and on-site museum, as announced in Union Budget, is the biggest Harappan settlement spread over an area of 550 hectares.
3. A museum and interpretation centre is being constructed in Rakhigarhi village which will showcase the lifestyle of the people who lived in this largest habitation of the Harappan era.The Haryana Government had issued a grant of Rs 24 crore for the museum on about 5.5 acres on the outskirts of the village.
4. There are nine mounds at the site of whch the mound numbers one to six are residential localities of pre-formation age early Harappan settlement while mound number 7 is a cemetery where four human skeletons were recovered by the excavators.
5. Global Heritage Fund, an international organisation working for the protection of endangered sites in the developing world, had also included Rakhigarhi in Asia’s 10 most significant archaeological sites facing irreparable loss and destruction.
6. Archaeologists have concluded that at the most flourished point of this city 5,000 years ago, no less than 50,000 was the population of Rakhigarhi and around 14 generations of Harappans had lived before they migrated from here when the land turned dry in the absence of water in the region.
Archaeological findings and scientific data have indicated that Rakhigarhi had been the more important centre of the Indus Valley Civilisation than the townships of Harappa and Mohenjo Daro located in Pakistan.
About Rakhigarhi :
Rakhigarhi, is a village in Hisar District in the state of Haryana in India, situated 150 kilometers to the northwest of Delhi. It is the site of a pre-Indus Valley Civilisation settlement going back to about 6500 BCE. Later, it was also part of the mature Indus Valley Civilisation, dating to 2600-1900 BCE.The site is located in the Ghaggar-Hakra river plain, some 27 km from the seasonal Ghaggar river.
Rakhigarhi encompasses a set of seven mounds, and there are many more settlement mounds in the immediate vicinity. Not all of them were occupied at the same time. Depending on which mounds to include, the estimates of the size of Rakhigarhi have been given variously as between 80 and 550 hectares. In January 2014, the discovery of additional mounds resulted in it becoming the largest Indus Valley Civilization site, overtaking Mohenjodaro (300 Hectares) by almost 50 hectares, resulting in almost 350 hectares.
The size and uniqueness of Rakhigarhi has drawn much attention of archaeologists all over the world. It is nearer to Delhi than other major sites, indicating the spread of the Indus Valley Civilization east across North India. Much of the area is yet to be excavated and published . Another related site in the area is Mitathal, which is still awaiting excavation.