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Name: ________________________________ Date: __________________________ Period: ______
Mohenjo-Daro
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Directions: (1) Use context clues, your background knowledge, the word bank, and the process of
elimination to fill in the blanks below. (2) Answer the questions as they occur. (3) Complete the
bubblemap by entering key terms from the reading. (4) Write a one paragraph summary of the reading.
WORD
BANK
artifacts
throughout
Mesopotamia cleanliness
Pakistan
The Indus Valley civilization emerged nearly 4,500 years ago. It
thrived for a thousand years, profiting from the highly fertile lands of
the Indus River floodplain and trade with the civilizations of nearby
(1) _______________. A well-planned street grid and an elaborate
drainage system hint that the occupants of the ancient Indus
civilization city of Mohenjo-Daro were skilled urban planners with a
reverence for the control of water. But just who occupied the
ancient city in modern-day (2) _______________ during the third
millennium B.C. remains a puzzle. “It’s pretty faceless,” says Indus
expert Gregory Possehl of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. The city lacks ostentatious
palaces, temples, or monuments. There’s no obvious central seat of government or evidence of a king
or queen. Modesty, order, and (3) _______________ were apparently preferred. Pottery and tools of
copper and stone were standardized. Seals and weights suggest a system of tightly controlled trade.
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What evidence above suggests that the people of Mohenjo-Daro had a central government?
Give two examples.
_________________________________
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_________________________________
If the people of Mohenjo-Daro did have a central government, provide one adjective that might
describe that government? (Pay special attention to the underlined sentence above.)
________________________________
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Explain why your adjective accurately describes the
government of Mohenjo-Daro.
___________________________________________
___________________________________________
The city’s wealth and stature is evident in (8) _______________ such as ivory, lapis, carnelian, and gold
beads, as well as the baked-brick city structures themselves. A watertight pool called the Great Bath,
perched on top of a mound and held in place with walls of baked brick, is the closest structure Mohenjo
Daro has to a temple. Possehl says it suggests an ideology based on cleanliness. Wells were found
(9) _______________ the city, and nearly every house contained a bathing area and drainage system.
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WORD
BANK
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elevated
discovered
elected
houses
Priest
acres
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Archeologists
(10) _______________ first visited Mohenjo-Daro in 1911.
Several excavations occurred in the 1920s through 1931.
Small probes took place in the 1930s, and subsequent digs
occurred in 1950 and 1964. The ancient city sits on
(11) _______________ ground in the modern-day Larkana
district of Sindh province in Pakistan. During its heyday
from about 2500 to 1900 B.C. the city was among the most
important to the Indus civilization, Possehl says. It spread
out over about 250 (12) _______________ on a series of
mounds, and the Great Bath and an associated large
building occupied the tallest mound.
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What evidence from the paragraph above supports that conclusion that the people of MohenjoDaro valued cleanliness?
______________________________________________________________________________
According to University of Wisconsin, Madison, archaeologist Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, the mounds grew
over the centuries as people kept building platforms and walls for their (14) _______________.
“Gradually you have a high promontory on which people are living,” he says. With no evidence of kings
or queens, Mohenjo-Daro was likely governed as a city-state, perhaps by (15) _______________ officials
or elites from each of the mounds.
16
Given the context, what might be a synonym that
could replace the word “promontory” in the
paragraph above?
______________________________
A miniature bronze statuette of a nude female, known as
the dancing girl, was celebrated by archaeologists when it
was (17) _______________ in 1926, Kenoyer notes. Of
greater interest to him, though, are a few stone sculptures
of seated male figures, such as the intricately carved and
colored (18) _______________ King, so called even though
there is no evidence he was a priest or king. The sculptures
were all found broken, Kenoyer says. “Whoever came in at
the very end of the Indus period clearly didn’t like the people who were representing themselves or
their elders,” he says.
19
If Kenoyer is correct about “Whoever came in at the very end of the Indus period,” what does
that suggest about the fate of the people of Mohenjo-Daro?
______________________________________________________________________________
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WORD
BANK
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abandoned
Pakistani
nobody
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ended
Just what (20) _______________ the Indus
civilization - and Mohenjo-Daro - is also a mystery.
Kenoyer suggests that the Indus River changed
course, which would have hampered the local
agricultural economy and the city’s importance as a
center of trade. But no evidence exists that flooding
destroyed the city, and the city wasn’t totally
(21) _______________, Kenoyer says. And, Possehl
says, a changing river course doesn’t explain the
collapse of the entire Indus civilization. Throughout
the valley, the culture changed, he says. “It reaches
some kind of obvious archaeological fruition about
1900 B.C.,” he said. “What drives that, (22) _______________ knows.” Many walls have already
collapsed at the Mohenjo-Daro archeological site. Others are crumbling from the ground up.
Preservation work for Mohenjo-Daro was suspended in December of 1996 after funding from the
(23) _______________ government and international organizations stopped. In 2012, Pakistani
archaeologists warned that, without improved conservation measures, the site could disappear by 2030.
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The Mohenjo-Daro site has survived for thousands of years. Why might the site be in more
danger in modern times than it has been over the past four thousand years?
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
Directions: Complete the bubblemap by entering key terms from the reading in the circles below.
Priest King
Great Bath
MOHENJODARO
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Directions: Write a one paragraph summary of the reading. Your paragraph must include four
sentences and most of the key terms from the bubblemap above, including the two provided.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Reviewer’s Directions: Review the paragraph above. Score each skill area by circling the appropriate
number. Use the notes section to further explain your assessment. Sign your review legibly.
PTS
IDEAS AND CONTENT
5
fully accomplished task
4+ subject-specific facts
PTS
ORGANIZATION
PTS
READABILITY
5
exceptional word usage
exceptional writing technique
effective tone and voice
5
4
accomplished task
at least 3 subject-specific facts
4
4
very good word usage
very good writing technique
effective tone and voice
3
minimally accomplished task
at least 2 subject-specific facts
3
attempted to organize ideas
logically
3
2
partially accomplished task
at least 1 subject-specific fact
2
minimally attempted to organize
ideas logically
2
ordinary word usage
attempted to adjust tone and
voice to audience
1
failed to accomplish task
no subject-specific facts
1
failed to organize or organized
illogically
1
less than minimal word usage and
writing technique
inappropriate tone and voice
organized ideas logically
organized ideas logically
attempted to adjust tone and
voice to audience
LANGUAGE CONVENTIONS
PTS
very few or no errors in capitalization, punctuation, spelling, or word usage/very few or no run-on sentences and/or sentence
fragments/no errors that impair the flow of communication - errors are infrequent
5 PTS
occasional errors in capitalization, punctuation, spelling, grammar, or word usage/may have run-on sentences, sentence
fragments/errors do not impede communication; the writer’s message is not seriously obscured
4 PTS
frequent errors in capitalization, punctuation, spelling, grammar, or word usage/run-on sentences and/or sentence
fragments/errors cause the reader to stop and re-read parts of the writing - errors impair communication
3 PTS
many errors in capitalization, punctuation, spelling, grammar, or word usage/run-on sentences and/or sentence
fragments/errors are serious and numerous, causing the reader to struggle to discern meaning
2 PTS
many errors in capitalization, punctuation, spelling, grammar, or word usage/errors are serious, numerous, and of a wide variety
- it is impossible to ascertain what the writer wants to communicate
1 PTS
NOTES: _________________________________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________ REVIEWER’S NAME: ______________________________________
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