View source for Kotada Bhadli, Kutch

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=The earliest known caravanserai=
==2025 findings==
[https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/pune/experts-trace-harappan-site-trade-stopover-in-kutch-say-infra-predates-silk-route-by-2k-years/articleshow/124728521.cms Neha Madaan, Oct 22, 2025: ''The Times of India'']

[[File: Kotada Bhadli.jpg|Kotada Bhadli <br/> From: [https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/pune/experts-trace-harappan-site-trade-stopover-in-kutch-say-infra-predates-silk-route-by-2k-years/articleshow/124728521.cms Neha Madaan, Oct 22, 2025: ''The Times of India'']|frame|500px]] 


PUNE: Bronze Age traders crossing Gujarat stopped at well-organised roadside facilities that offered shelter, food, security, and stables for their pack animals. A new multidisciplinary study by Pune-based Deccan College Post-Graduate and Research Institute, Symbiosis School for Liberal Arts, and Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), New Delhi, published in L'Anthropologie (Elsevier, 2025), has identified a 4,000-year-old Harappan settlement in Kotada Bhadli in Kutch as the earliest known caravanserai— a fortified rural stopover that supported long-distance trade between 2300 and 1900 BCE.

The findings now push back the origins of organized trade infrastructure in the subcontinent by over 2,000 years, showing that the Harappans had evolved not only urban planning and maritime trade but also systematic land-based logistics with fortified rest stops, animal shelters and food provisioning points. Lead researcher Prabodh Shirvalkar from Deccan College told TOI, "This is the first confirmed archaeological evidence of a caravanserai in the Harappan world — a type of infrastructure previously known only from later historical periods."Excavated between 2010 and 2013 by Deccan College in collaboration with Gujarat State Archaeology Department, the site has now been reinterpreted using advanced techniques — including ground penetrating radar, magnetic and satellite surveys, isotopic and lipid analyses, and three forms of dating, he added.Researchers, including Esha Prasad and Yadubirsingh Rawat, said the finding bridges a key missing link in the trade mechanism of the Indus Valley Civilization, revealing how long-distance overland trade was supported by an organized system of rest stops and logistical hubs — a structure previously thought to have emerged only in the early historic or medieval periods.

While the existence of Harappan trade with Mesopotamia and inland India is well-established, the mechanism of how merchants, animals, and goods actually moved across land remained unclear. The new study proposes that Harappan commerce depended on a network of small fortified stopovers, strategically placed along trade routes between urban centres like Dholavira, Lothal, and Shikarpur in Gujarat. Earlier excavations revealed a multi-roomed central building, fortified walls with bastions, and large open spaces that were likely used to hold animals and goods — all consistent with a caravanserai's layout.Shirvalkar added that the site was small, strategically placed, and fortified but non-urban — designed for short halts rather than permanent residence. 

By identifying caravanserai-like traits — fortification, animal pens, open spaces, food waste, and imported goods — the paper said that Harappans maintained an organized trade infrastructure two millennia before the Silk Route, he added."The Harappan economy was not just about city markets and ports like Dholavira or Lothal. It had a logistical backbone. Caravanserais that sustained traders on long inland routes," Shirvalkar said.Finished products were brought in What makes Kotada Bhadli unusual is what archaeologists didn't find: No kilns, furnaces, or workshopsThe team uncovered copper tools from Rajasthan's Khetri belt, steatite beads from Haryana, glauconite and nontronite beads from Kutch, and marine shells from the coastThe site also yielded marine fish bones — including shark, barramundi and catfish —more than 50km from the sea, hinting at even perishable foods travelling inland. Shirvalkar said the site showed three construction phases of which one was linked to rebuilding after an earthquake around 2200 BCE, a period of regional tectonic activity in Kutch."We mapped Harappan routes using archaeological and historical data and came to know that modern highways in Kutch follow the same east–west corridors used 4,000 years ago. British officer James Burnes, who travelled from Bhuj to Tatta (now in Pakistan) in 1839, recorded taking almost the same path. Natural barriers like the Rann to the north and the Gulf to the south ensured these ancient arteries endured", said Prabodh Shirvalkar, Lead author of the research paper.