2-979-569 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Ground plan of one of the houses excavated at Brahmunabad, 1857. Ancient city in what is now Pakistan, excavated at his own expense by Mr. A. F. Bellasis, of the Bombay Civil Service: '...a house with a variety of rooms began fast to take shape, and disclose its proportions. We had not dug two feet before we came to quantities of bones, and...skeletons...so numerous that it was hardly possible to dig a powra (a large hoe) full of earth without bringing up particles of bones. As far as I could judge, many were undeniably human bones, and others those of cattle and horses. The human bones were chiefly found in doorways, as if the people had been attempting to escape, and others in the corners of the rooms. Many of the skeletons were in a sufficiently perfect state to show the position the body had assumed: some were upright, some recumbent, with their faces down, and some crouched in a sitting posture'. From "Illustrated London News", 1857.