Shereen Ratnagar, in her brand new book The Magic in the Image Women in Clay at Mohenjo-daro and Harappa (soon to be reviewed here) offers an interesting conjecture around a set of male figurines found at the two iconic Indus sites.
340 posts, also carried on our Facebook page, about the ancient Indus Valley civilization, including important news, research and occasional visits to museums with ancient Indus artifacts.
Nov 26, 2018
Iravatham Mahadevan, India's leading expert on the Indus script, and Padmashri award winner (2009), sadly passed away on Monday in Chennai. He was 89. His contributions towards the understanding of early Indian and Tamil scripts were unparalleled; he was also an extremely generous contributor to Harappa.com, one whose scholarship was widely recognized internationally.
Dec 31, 2017
Happy New Year from all of us working Harappa.com: Ilona Aronovsky, Nadine Zubair (Editors), Vasant Dave (Community), Jeff Turner (Programming). With a lot to come in 2018 . . ..
Dec 19, 2017
One of the nice thing about archaeology is the surprises. Surprises like finding the Ghaggar-Hakra aka Sarasvati River according to some was not flowing in any big way during the Indus period (3500 BCE-1800 BCE).
Dec 13, 2017
Photographs of the new Indus section and an exclusive interview with Curator Daniela de Simone on how it all came together.
Sep 18, 2017
It may be hard to imagine that the best places to see artefacts of the ancient town of Chanhiyun Jo Daro [Chanhu Daro] are along the eastern seaboard of the United States.
Sep 6, 2017
This is pure speculation, but in looking at this long seal from Mohenjo-daro [M-1271], and seal signs from Mesopotamia which we know the meaning of, it could just be that some of the Indus signs are also names of places or of particular cities.
Aug 27, 2017
Bridget Allchin, a pioneering woman archaeologist of South Asia, recently passed away. The Guardian has a fine summary of her remarkable career.
Jul 3, 2017
"The weights are precisely made, well polished and systematic (though unfortunately not inscribed with any Indus characters, which would have helped scholars to decipher the script's numerical system)."
Jul 1, 2017
A really nice and well-written blog entry about the analysis of bones and other material from ancient Dilmun [Bahrain], before we even knew where the civilization lay.
Jun 13, 2017
"The most important crafts were in the fields of textiles, ceramic manufacturing, stone carving, household artefacts such as razors, bowls, cups, vases and spindles, and the production of jewelry, statuettes, figurines and children's toys, some of which were mechanical in function."
Jun 8, 2017
An excellent article in Frontline just out on Rajasthan excavations 2017, lots of exciting stuff, 27 images, 6 pages, including a copper tablet with a long inscription.
Jun 5, 2017
The image is published in a blog entry by Alessandro Ceccarelli of the Two Rains Project at the University of Cambridge, source of some of the most interesting recent research on the agriculture and demise of the ancient Indus civilization.
May 27, 2017
Just as we turn to more of the publications about discoveries about ancient Dilmun, another find on an island near Bahrain, with Indus pottery fragments, and a Gulf-type seal that reiterates how important trade relationships by sea were with this area.
May 26, 2017
The drainage system was one of the most remarkable features of the Mature Harappan city. All the streets and lanes across neighbourhoods in Mohenjo-daro had drains. In addition there was also provision for managing wastewater inside the houses with vertical pipes in the walls that led to chutes opening on to the street.