There is a dearth of ancient Indus-based fiction in English; there are even fewer works in Hindi or Urdu. Yakoob Yawar's Dilmun is among the very few exceptions (indeed, it was the second novel ever to be set in the ancient Indus civilization, 50 years after the Hindi Murdon ka Teela by Rangeya Raghava).
Another answer to a question from you by our panel of leading Indus archaeologists.
And what exactly is steatite?
Dennys Frenez, Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, Nisha Yadav and Massimo Vidale respond.
Surely for a civilization to be so strong, it would need some sort of system of government. Yet I have heard very little evidence of a ruling party or even so much as a hierarchy or caste system within the civilization?
A clever paper looking at how far we have drifted from some of the better ancient Indus ways of living.
Massimo Vidale and Mark Kenoyer respond.
An important paper that shows how strontium isotope analysis can help reveal the interactions between and migrations of people in ancient times.
Massimo Vidale
Prof. J. M. Kenoyer, who has recently investigated the Granary at Harappa, is the best person to answer these questions.
Answered by Massimo Vidale, Mayank Vahia, Gwen Robbins Schug, Nisha Yadav, Paolo Biagi and Rita P. Wright
A complex meta-analysis of data in a corner of northwestern India for what it can tell us about settlement patterns during the ancient Indus period and just after, when a host of factors, including possibly climate change, seem to have contributed to a re-allocation of populations between types of settlements.
