A young couple’s grave found in the Rakhigarhi cemetery of the Harappan Civilization

The Harappan Civilization, one of the earliest complex societies in the world, flourished on the Indian subcontinent. Although many additional Harappan settlements and cemeteries have been discovered and investigated, no coupled burials at Harappan cemeteries have been reported to date. In 2013‒2016, we excavated the cemetery of the Rakhigarhi site (Haryana), the largest city of the Harappan Civilization. At the site, we found a grave that turned out to be a coupled (joint) burial of the primary type. This report is the first anthropologically confirmed case of coupled burial from a Harappan cemetery.