An Indus Scale
Chapter 5 from Sudeshna Guha's bestselling A History of India Through 75 Objects (2022), includes a little-known object described as a ‘measure of length’ by Ernest Mackay.
354 peer-reviewed articles from leading journals about the latest discoveries about the ancient Indus civilization, its antecedents and contemporaries in the Persian Gulf and Mesopotamia, during the Bronze Age 3500-1700 BCE by the world's ancient Indus archaeologists and scholars.
Forgotten Islands of the Past: The Archaeology of the Northern Coast of the Arabian Sea
The author, who has been working in the larger region for decades exploring the long history of human habitation and industry going back tens of thousands of years, turns his attention to the geographic changes in the Indus delta region through the Bronze Age and what recent work shows us were the curious "islands" that once existed in lower Sindh (Dholavira, in Gujarat, is another example of such a later settlement).
What Lay Beneath: Queen Puabi’s Garments and Her Passage to the Underworld
"The reconstruction of Puabi fully adorned provides insights into the fabric that lay beneath the sumptuous ornaments. The queen’s spectacular accessories, though important, have diverted our attention away from the cloth that lay beneath the eye-catching ornaments, which deteriorated (or de-materialized) long ago and so has been mostly invisible to us in the present day."
Guabba, the Meluhhan Village in Mesopotamia
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.
Mining Bronze Age Stone Resources: Some examples from the Caucasus (Georgia) and Sindh (Pakistan)
Archaeologists often assume that metals like bronze replaced the need for stone tools, but is this really the case given the evidence in these two areas not to mention select Mediterranean regions? In the Indus region, what was the use of these tools given their limited presence in Mohenjo-daro and Harappa?
Excavations at Chanhu-daro 1935-36
The original article by Ernest Mackay on the excavations he led at a key ancient Indus site known for fine craftsmanship, with all 10 plates.
Heterarchic Powers in the Ancient Indus Cities
This thoughtful and enlightening paper starts with a clear statement of the writer's point-of-view: "On the other hand, to keep writing that Indus society in the 3rd millennium BC was uniform, acephalous, egalitarian and classless, that it was not a state, that its people rejected violence, elites
Indus zoomorphism and its avatars
A technical paper which rewards the follower with valuable insights and serves, on a platter as it were, some complex puzzles in Indus iconography for further cogitation to the reader.
Stone Beads in Oman during the 3rd to 2nd Millennia BCE. New Approaches to the Study of Trade and Technology
"In this paper," write the authors, "we present the preliminary results of a long-term and multifaceted study of the role of craft specialists and traders who were present in ancient Magan during the 5th-1st millennia BCE (Table 1), with a specific focus on beads found at sites in modern Oman, and
Multi-cropping, Intercropping and Adaptation to Variable Environments in Indus South Asia
A comprehensive look at what we know about agricultural strategies during the ancient Indus period, and how truly varied and sophisticated these most likely were, with careful adaptation to local conditions and water availability.
A Note on the Interregional Interactions between the Indus Civilization and the Arabian Peninsula during the Third Millennium BCE
"This article examines the diachronic developments of the interregional relationship between the two regions based on the ceramic evidence both from the Greater Indus Valley and the Arabian peninsula.
Quarries in Harappa
"Flint was the most important raw material exploited by the third millennium BCE Bronze Age inhabitants of the Indus Valley and its related territories." This uncompromising statement by a scholar and field researcher who has been working in the region for decades offers a window on what must
Diversity, variability, adaptation and ‘fragility’ in the Indus Civilization
A superb framing of how we might think of the Indus civilization and its evolution as a larger entity in comparison and contrast with other ancient civilizations. How did Indus cities fit into a rural context? Were they ruled by elites? How did they manage to survive so long?
Carnelian and Agate Beads in the Oman Peninsula during the Third to Second millennia BC
A detailed look at carnelian and agate sources and manufacture throughout the Gulf region, and how many of the beads found show clear evidence of ancient Indus manufacturing techniques.
Integrating Lipid and Starch Grain Analyses From Pottery Vessels to Explore Prehistoric Foodways in Northern Gujarat, India
A solid foray into the question of what the ancient Indus people, at least in Gujarat, cooked and ate, and how that might have changed after the civilization seems to have declined.
Heritage, Archaeology and the Indus Civilization
Dr. Guha goes through the epistemology governing each period's research and framing of the Indus Civilization with respect to those civilizations around, and those closer to home.
The Important Stone and Metal Resources of Gujarat during the Harappan Period
"In the year 2000," writes the author, "I initiated a large‐scale effort to identify the geologic sources from which peoples of the Indus Civilization (ca. 2600 to 1900 BC) acquired rock and mineral resources."
Setting the wheels in motion: Re-examining ceramic forming techniques in Indus Civilisation villages in northwest India
"The discovery of the rotational capabilities of the wheel was one of the most significant human inventions, and wheel-enhanced rotation is now pervasive in the tools and machines that we use in our everyday lives. Importantly, the wheel was a major contributor to a range of developments in craft production technology, perhaps most visibly in the various forms of potter’s rotational devices and wheels."
Documenting Mohenjo-Daro: Digitization and Visualization of Architecture, Infrastructure, and Artefacts from DK-G South
Another example of how modern data science and the re-analysis of data collected by early archaeologists are opening new frontiers of discovery. In this case, finds made in one area of Mohenjo-daro, excavated by K.N. Dikshit, are being tabulated and located precisely in relation to other objects and the strata or level they were found at.
Bioarchaeology of the Indus Valley Civilization: Biological Affinities, Paleopathology, and Chemical Analyses
"In spite of the challenges that face bioarchaeological research in South Asia, the results obtained from the investigations of the past 30 years have revolutionized our understanding of the peoples of the ancient Indus Valley, providing contemporary, scientifically informed interpretations from skeletal collections that were often collected decades ago."
The use of colour in the Protohistoric pottery from Pakistani Balochistan and from Mundigak (Afghanistan): Cultural Identities and Technical Traditions
A rare article looking in detail at something archaeologists usually do not focus on, but was and is of immense importance in art and human experience. Ancient Balochistan before the Indus period was known for some of the most vibrant colour pottery in South Asia.
INAA of agate sources and artifacts from the Indus, Helmand, and Thailand Regions
"Geologically speaking," write the authors, "agate is not a particularly uncommon rock . . .. However, good agate – i.e, that which ancient lapidaries would have found suitable for beadmaking – is not widely available. Nodules of the size and quality required to make Harappan-style long-barrel carnelian beads are, in fact, extremely rare" (p. 177).
New evidence for early 4th millennium BP agriculture in the Western Himalayas: Qasim Bagh, Kashmir
"The valleys of Kashmir and Swat in the Western Himalayan-Hindu Kush regions of India and Pakistan are home to an important prehistoric cultural complex beginning at around 5000 BP, loosely grouped as the “Northern Neolithic” (Coningham and Young, 2015), especially characterised by a rich agricultural tradition."
Early Evidence of Bead- Making at Mehrgarh, Pakistan: A Tribute to the Scientific Curiosity of Catherine and Jean- François Jarrige
Jean-Francois Jarrige (1940-2014) and his wife Catherine (b. 1942) were two of the most important archaeologists in the South Asian region, whose excavations at Mehrgarh, the site in Balochistan which predates the ancient Indus civilization by thousands of years, helped determine how far back the development of various traditions found in that and other regional civilizations actually reached.
Indus Script and Indus Culture
A succinct summary of some of the features and nature of the ancient Indus script by three Indian scholars who have spent a great part of their careers investigating it. Presented at the International Conference on Indus Script at Mohenjo Daro in January 2020, points are listed as clear statements that can help others puzzled by the script, or who wish to attempt or consider other approaches to "deciphering" the script.
Early agriculture in South Asia
A superb chapter from Cambridge Histories Online of the very complicated development of agriculture in the subcontinent, which is really the story of four different developments, in the northwest (including the Indus valley), north (the Gangetic plains), south and east, each with different timelines, crops and animal husbandry to account for.
Indus Stone Beads in the Ghaggar Plain with a Focus on the Evidence from Farmana and Mitathal
The first in-depth look at stone beads from Indus sites besides Harappa, in this case two just south of Rakigarhi. Stone beads include those made of steatite (the vast majority, about 91%), carnelian (8%), as well as jasper, agate, lapis luzuli, limestone and more. Steatite and carnelian beads are found at levels corresponding to all time periods.
The Indus Script: Invention and Use of a Bronze Age Writing System
A well-illustrated 140 slide PDF that explores the Indus script, origins, writing direction and more. While the slides by Indus scholar Dennys Frenez lack his narration, many of the slides are self-explanatory and provide a rich visual overview of the Indus civilization its writing and the many issues involved.
Short Report: A déjeté Levallois tool from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (Pakistan) and the role it plays in the chronology of the Pleistocene terraces of the Bannu Basin
Very little is known about the subcontinent's history hundreds of thousands of years ago, say 300,000-30,000 years ago, which would have been the Middle Paleolithic period for example, except for small clues left at places like the Rohri chert (flint) mines and along the Indus in Sindh and else
Preliminary Results of Excavation at Karanpura, a Harappan Settlement in District Hanumangarh, Rajasthan
The results of two seasons of excavations 2012-2014 at a small site to the west of Rakigarhi in Rajasthan, on the modern River Chautang (Drishdavati). Largely destroyed by irrigation construction a few years previously – "it can now be assessed that at least 70% of the fortified settlement was destroyed" write the authors (p. 16) – Karanpura has nevertheless yielded an impressive set of artifacts from about 2800-2000 BCE.