Kot Dijian pottery at Mohenjo‑daro

Archaeologists say pottery from the Kot Diji tradition turned up beneath Mohenjo-daro’s earliest city wall, placing people at the site before its classic Indus-era buildout. (arabnews.com) Mohenjo-daro in Sindh, Pakistan, has long been known as a major city of the Mature Harappan period, usually dated to about 2600 to 1900 Before Common Era. UNESCO describes it as a vast third-millennium Before Common Era brick city in the Indus valley. (whc.unesco.org) The new evidence comes from deep coring and excavation below the first mud-brick wall west of the Stupa Mound. Pakistani officials said pottery and carbon samples from the wall’s lowest levels date that first construction phase to about 2700 to 2600 Before Common Era. (arabnews.pk) Kot Diji, also written Kot Diji or Kot Dijian for the broader ceramic tradition, names an Early Harappan phase that predates the fully urban Indus cities. At the type-site near Khairpur in Sindh, archaeologists identified painted red pottery and other traits that overlap with later Harappan material. (harappa.com) (pakistanpaedia.com) That matters for chronology because the pottery sits below the first wall, not in later debris. Disha Ahluwalia wrote on April 13, 2026, that the find points to an earlier, pre-urban occupation at Mohenjo-daro rather than proving a fully formed city there in 3300 Before Common Era. (theprint.in) Some headlines in March and April framed the discovery as proof that Mohenjo-daro itself dated to 3300 Before Common Era. Ahluwalia and other coverage of the excavation drew a narrower distinction: early settlement and ceramic tradition can predate the site’s large-scale urban phase by centuries. (dawn.com) (theprint.in) The comparison point is Harappa in Punjab, where excavators have also identified an Early Harappan, Kot Dijian phase beneath later urban layers. Pakistani reporting on the Mohenjo-daro work said the two sites now show a similar sequence, with early occupation followed by wall building and then Mature Harappan expansion. (dawn.com) (arabnews.com) The recent work also revisits an older trench dug by Mortimer Wheeler in 1950 near the western mound. Reporting on the new excavation said Wheeler had treated the massive mud-brick feature as flood protection, while the new stratigraphy and radiocarbon samples support reading it as a city wall built in several phases. (dawn.com) (ancient-origins.net) So the pottery does not make Mohenjo-daro the world’s oldest city. It does show that one of South Asia’s best-known Bronze Age centers grew out of an older local tradition already present on the site before the city reached its familiar form. (theprint.in) (arabnews.pk)