Mehrgarh @ the Lahore Museum

"Mehrgarh World's Oldest City" claims the banner in the Lahore Museum gallery, where the wooden display cases seem not to have changed since John Lockwood Kipling was in charge more than a century ago. There are few other places to glimpse some of the finer treasures from this 7000 BCE site in western Balochistan, the oldest larger settlement found in the subcontinent.

Ahimsa : 100 Reflections on the Harappan Civilization

There is a lot to like about this well-written and engaging set of reflections on ancient Indus life and culture. It does not hesitate to examine its biases: "much of our acceptance of the past is a function of the present," writes the author, and "what I present are not arguments . . . these are not free of my prejudices. So approach this book in the spirit of curiosity, not combat."

Debt and inequality: Comparing the “means of specification” in the early cities of Mesopotamia and the Indus civilization

"Debt lurks in the shadow of reciprocity," is the wonderful starting sentence of this paper. Highly theoretical, it opens up important questions about seals in the ancient Indus and Mesopotamian civilizations and their role in the system of administrative control which helped integrate society at the dawn of urban civilization.

Separated at Birth?

The Dancing Girl of Mohenjo-daro and a postcard of a Dancing Girl by Gobindram Oodeyram of Jaipur from around 1905. In his new engaging and speculative book Ahimsa 100 Reflections on the Harappan Civilization, Devdutt Pattanaik writes of the famous so-called dancing girl figurine found at Mohenjo-daro.

Feeding ancient cities in South Asia: dating the adoption of rice, millet and tropical pulses in the Indus civilisation

An investigation of the agricultural practices that supported the rise of the Indus civilization by focusing on summer and winter crops used at settlements in the Rakhigarhi, Haryana area, particularly Masudpur VII and Masudpur I.

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