Culture

Articles focused on topics of anthropological or socio-cultural significance including family dynamics, gender, social relations, religion, daily life, ideologies and social stratification in the ancient Indus Valley civilization.

‘We are inheritors of a rural civilisation’: rural complexity and the ceramic economy in the Indus Civilisation in northwest India

Danika Parikh
The relationship between ancient Indus centers - which we know best and consider a hallmark of the civilization - and the vast rural "hinterland" that surrounded them is the subject of this lucid paper.

Shell Working Industries of the Indus Civilization: A Summary

Shell Inlay
Jonathan Mark Kenoyer
Major species of marine mollusca used in the shell industry are discussed in detail and possible ancient shell source areas are identified. Variations in shell artifacts within and between various urban, rural and coastal sites are presented as evidence for specialized production, hierarchical internal trade networks and regional interaction spheres.

Guabba, the Meluhhan Village in Mesopotamia

Petrus S. Vermaak
Until Dr. Vermaak's paper (2008), no one had connected the known existence of a Meluhhan village in the Girsu/Lagash area with Guabba; the availability of more texts since the first connections were made by scholars like Asko Parpola allowed him to both locate it more precisely and tease out a number of other references that give us some sense of what these people did and were known for.

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