PUNE: Bronze Age traders crossing Gujarat stopped at well-organised roadside facilities that offered shelter, food, security and stables for their pack animals.A new multidisciplinary study by Pune-based Deccan College Post-Graduate and Research Institute, Symbiosis School for Liberal Arts, and Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), New Delhi, published in L’Anthropologie (Elsevier, 2025), has identified a 4,000-year-old Harappan settlement at Kotada Bhadli in Kutch as the earliest known caravanserai — a fortified rural stopover that supported long-distance trade between 2300 and 1900 BCE. The findings now push back the origins of organised trade infrastructure in the subcontinent by over 2,000 years.Lead researcher Prabodh Shirvalkar from Deccan College told TOI: “This is the first confirmed archaeological evidence of a caravanserai in the Harappan world — a type of infrastructure previously known only from later historical periods.”Excavated between 2010 and 2013 in collaboration with Gujarat State Archaeology Department, the site has now been reinterpreted using advanced techniques— including ground penetrating radar, magnetic and satellite surveys, isotopic and lipid analyses, and three forms of dating, Shirvalkar added.Researchers, including Esha Prasad and Yadubirsingh Rawat, said the finding bridges a key missing link in the trade mechanism of the Indus Valley Civilization, revealing how long-distance overland trade was supported by an organised system of rest stops and logistical hubs — a structure previously thought to have emerged only in the early historic or medieval periods.While the existence of Harappan trade with Mesopotamia and inland India is well-established, the mechanism of how merchants, animals and goods actually moved across land remained unclear. The new study proposes that Harappan commerce depended on a network of small fortified stopovers, strategically placed along trade routes between urban centres like Dholavira, Lothal and Shikarpur in Gujarat.Earlier excavations revealed a multi-roomed central building, fortified walls with bastions, and large open spaces that were likely used to hold animals and goods — all consistent with a caravanserai’s layout.Shirvalkar added that the site was small, strategically placed and fortified, but non-urban — designed for short halts rather than permanent residence. By identifying caravanserai-like traits — fortification, animal pens, open spaces, food waste and imported goods — the paper said that Harappans maintained an organised trade infrastructure two millennia before the Silk Route.“The Harappan economy was not just about city markets and ports like Dholavira or Lothal. It had a logistical backbone. Caravanserais that sustained traders on long inland routes,” Shirvalkar said.
