Lothal dockyard and international trade relations (Answer in 150 words)

- Lothal dockyard and international trade relations (Answer in 150 words)
Introduction
Lothal, excavated by S. R. Rao from 1955 in coastal Gujarat, is the site on which the case for Harappan maritime trade has rested.

Body
1. The structure and its context: a trapezoidal baked-brick basin on the eastern edge of the town, about 218 by 37 metres and four metres deep, with an inlet channel and a spillway. Beside it a mud-brick warehouse on a podium of sixty-four blocks yielded scores of sealings bearing reed and cord impressions, with a bead factory, a coppersmith's workshop and a graduated ivory scale nearby.
2. The dockyard reading and its critics: Rao read the basin as a tidal dock. Leshnik and others argued it is an irrigation tank, pointing to the spillway, the silt and the difficulty of bringing vessels so far inland.
3. The trade inference: a Persian Gulf seal, Harappan seals at Ur, carnelian and shell exports, lapis from Badakhshan and copper from Oman place Lothal within the Meluhha-Dilmun-Magan circuit named in Mesopotamian texts.

Conclusion
The overseas contact is proved by the seals and the goods, not by the basin.