Editing Indus Valley Civilisation (section)

== Etymology ==
The Indus civilisation is 
named after the [[Indus River|Indus]] [[Drainage system (geomorphology)|River system]] in whose [[alluvial plain]]s the early sites of the civilisation were identified and excavated.{{sfn|Wright|2009|p=10}}{{refn|group=lower-alpha|Wright: "''Unable to state the age of the civilization, he went on to observe that the Indus (which he ([[John Marshall (archaeologist)|John Marshall]]) named after the river system) artifacts differed from any known other civilizations in the region, ...''"{{sfn|Wright|2009|p=10}} }}

Following a tradition in archaeology, the civilisation is sometimes referred to as the ''Harappan,'' after its [[type site]], [[Harappa]], the first site to be excavated in the 1920s; this is notably true of usage employed by the [[Archaeological Survey of India]] after India's independence in 1947.{{sfn|Habib|2002|pp=13–14}}{{refn|group=lower-alpha|Habib: "''Sir John Marshall, then Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India, used the term 'Indus civilization' for the culture discovered at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, a term doubly apt because of the geographical context implied in the name 'Indus' and the presence of cities implied in the word 'civilization'. Others, notably the Archaeological Survey of India after Independence, have preferred to call it 'Harappan', or 'Mature Harappan', taking Harappa to be its type-site.''"{{sfn|Habib|2002|pp=13–14}}}}

The term "Ghaggar-Hakra" figures prominently in modern labels applied to the Indus civilisation on account of a good number of sites having been found along the [[Ghaggar-Hakra River]] in northwest India and eastern Pakistan.{{sfn|Possehl|2002|pp=[https://books.google.com/books?id=XVgeAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA8 8–11]}} The terms "Indus-Sarasvati Civilisation" and "Sindhu-Saraswati Civilisation" have also been employed in the literature by supporters of [[Indigenous Aryanism]], after a posited identification of the Ghaggar-Hakra with the river [[Sarasvati River|Sarasvati]] described in the early chapters of the ''[[Rigveda]]'', a collection of hymns in [[Vedic Sanskrit|archaic Sanskrit]] composed in the second-millennium BCE,<ref name="Singh2008"/>{{sfn|Habib|2002|p=44}} which are unrelated to the mature phase of the Indus Valley Civilization.

Recent geophysical research suggests that unlike the Sarasvati, described in the ''Rigveda'' as a snow-fed river, the Ghaggar-Hakra was a system of perennial monsoon-fed rivers, which became seasonal around the time that the civilisation diminished, approximately 4,000&nbsp;years ago.{{Sfn|Giosan|Clift|Macklin|Fuller|2012}}{{refn|group=lower-alpha|Giosan (2012): "Numerous speculations have advanced the idea that the Ghaggar-Hakra fluvial system, at times identified with the lost mythical river of Sarasvati (e.g., 4, 5, 7, 19), was a large glacier fed Himalayan river. Potential sources for this river include the Yamuna River, the Sutlej River, or both rivers. However, the lack of large-scale incision on the interfluve demonstrates that large, glacier-fed rivers did not flow across the Ghaggar-Hakra region during the Holocene. ... The present Ghaggar-Hakra valley and its tributary rivers are currently dry or have seasonal flows. Yet rivers were undoubtedly active in this region during the Urban Harappan Phase. We recovered sandy fluvial deposits approximately 5,400&nbsp;y old at Fort Abbas in Pakistan (SI Text), and recent work (33) on the upper Ghaggar-Hakra interfluve in India also documented Holocene channel sands that are approximately 4,300&nbsp;y old. On the upper interfluve, fine-grained floodplain deposition continued until the end of the Late Harappan Phase, as recent as 2,900&nbsp;y ago (33) (Fig.&nbsp;2B). This widespread fluvial redistribution of sediment suggests that reliable monsoon rains were able to sustain perennial rivers earlier during the Holocene and explains why Harappan settlements flourished along the entire Ghaggar-Hakra system without access to a glacier-fed river."{{Sfn|Giosan|Clift|Macklin|Fuller|2012}}}}