The Northern Gujarat Archaeological Project

MS University of Baroda and IMF-Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) collaborative project

Gujarat is constituted by three major geographical regions: Kutch (an island connected to the mainland), Saurashtra (a peninsula jetting into the Indian Ocean) and mainlad Gujarat. The corridor that connects the mainland with Kutch is known as North Gujarat or Anarta. This area has been considered for long time a backwater of the Indus Civilization (Harappan Civilization) with very few settlements. However, with the discovery of more than hundred sites during the last 3 decades this perspective has radically changed. Of enormous interest is the presence in this area of sites belonging to prehistoric hunter-gatherers, pastoralists and Chalcolithic agriculturalists (Indus) and therefore north Gujarat has emerged as an area of great potential for understanding the process of interaction between these groups during the 4th and 3rd millennium BC.  The overall objective of the NoGAP is to reconstruct this interaction and its effects by integrating archaeological, geographical and palaeoecological analyses. An important part of the project is also the study of traditional economic groups by an ethnoarchaeological approach. 

This project is funded by Generalitat de Catalunya (EXCAVA program and Batista i Roca program) and the MS University of Baroda.