Combining TanDEM-X with multi-temporal, multi-source satellite data for the reconstruction of the Bronze Age landscapes of the Indus Civilisation

The ancient Indus was, along with Mesopotamia and Egypt, one of the three so-called cradles of Old World civilisation. Many Indus sites, some of them large urban nuclei such as Harappa and Mohenjo Daro, lie along major river systems that stretch across modern Pakistan and northwest India. The extremely flat physiography of the Indus River floodplain in conjunction with its proximity to the Himalayas and the distribution of winter westerly rain and rain from the Indian Summer Monsoon combine to produce a distinctive environmental zone where water availability is extremely seasonal, has significant variability, and can produce very active fluvial processes. This variability had enormous consequences for early human habitation of the Indus zone. The relict Ghaggar-Hakra and its tributaries, for example, once extended much of the eastern part of the Indus River basin and appear to have supported concentrations of settlements across greater Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan in India and Punjab in Pakistan. This area was a locus for clusters of settlements related to the Indus Civilisation ( fig. 1 ). The Ghaggar-Hakra's middle and lower courses are both flanked and obscured by the advancing dune systems of the Thar Desert of Cholistan.