Terracotta plough
Also called: Banawali plough · Topic: Harappan (Sindhu-Sarasvati) Civilisation · NCERT: Beyond NCERT
Meaning
A terracotta plough is a small model of a plough made of baked clay. It is a toy-sized copy, not a working tool. Such models have been found at Banawali in Haryana and at sites in the Cholistan desert in Pakistan. They matter because they show that Harappan farmers used ploughs, probably pulled by oxen, to prepare their fields.
Example
At Banawali, in the Sarasvatī (Ghaggar) basin of Haryana, archaeologists found a terracotta plough model. It supports other evidence of ploughing: images of bulls on seals, and a ploughed field at Kalibangan in Rajasthan from the Early Harappan phase. That field has two sets of furrows (the lines a plough cuts in soil) at right angles, which suggests two crops were grown together.
Don't confuse with
- Ploughed field at Kalibangan: this is a real field with furrows in the ground. The Banawali plough is only a clay model of the tool.
Related concepts
- Harappan subsistence
- Harappan agriculture
- Harappan cotton
- Rangpur
- Cholistan
- Ploughed field at Kalibangan
- Harappan irrigation