Photo 1009/4(1509)

Genre: Architectural Photography

View of excavated trench, with remains of wall at bottom: '...Deep excavation through the heaps of brick debris, which rise to 15 and 20 feet above the original street levels, revealed the fact that the foundations of all the upper buildings do not go any great depth into the mounds but are rather built upon them. It revealed more. Beneath the upper foundations, and with several feet of brick and earth debris between them, I found the foundations of older brick buildings. In the latter only the very old Hindu brick of great size was used, whilst in the upper walls a few of these were used with others of a far smaller size. Photograph No. 1509 shows one of these excavations. Above is seen the foundation of a wall, while seven feet below is seen a low cross-wall. The intervening space is filled with potsherds, bone, charcoal, ash, and small fragments of bricks, but there are no whole bricks. This absence of loose whole bricks in the intervening space, which is the debris of the older city, explains why we find both the older larger bricks and the smaller one of the Muhammadans in the same walls of the upper ruins. The Arab conquerors in rebuilding the city used again all the old material as far as it would go and supplemented it with new...' (Progress Report of the Archaeological Survey of Western India, for the year ending 30th June 1897, p. 12). The print is reproduced as Fig. 1 in Henry Cousens, Brahmanabad-Mansura in Sind (Archaeological Survey of India, Annual Report 1903-04 (Calcutta, 1906), pp.132-144).

Subjects = archaeological excavations; archaeological sites; Archaeological Survey of India Collections; Archaeological Survey of India Collections (Western Circle)

Location = Brahmanabad; Pakistan; Sindh