An exciting new study that looks at food residues ancient Indus pots found in sites around Rakigarhi to decode the foodstuffs that once were in those pots. By examining the lipids or fatty acids that can be extracted from pots and pottery fragments, investigators were able to determine some of the foodstuffs in the pots. >

This is a really important article in that it shows how modern scientific tools and techniques can be used to cast surprising light on the assumptions and conclusions [myths?] that are often drawn from the limited set of evidence archaeologists have to work with. >

Science is slowly transforming ancient Indus studies, from DNA analysis of skeletons that point to migration and disease, to isotope analysis that reveals the distant origins of raw materials. One of the cleverest – and potentially rewarding i terms of increasing the number of ancient sites to investigate – must be the use of old maps. >

An interesting series of reflections on how we have viewed the ancient Indus through the prism of whatever archaeological priorities or worldviews were in fashion then, and how the evidence, slowly, can push against these preconceptions. >

The intriguing question this paper takes on is whether or not chert blade (also known as flint, used for lighting fires) production could have taken place here, 500 km as the crow flies from the Rohri Flint Quarries, a massive site with evidence for mining going back hundreds of thousands of years and covered in detail by numerous scholars. >

A proposed Indus sign reading of Muruku on a stone axe found in South India. >

The second article of a pair with Mapping Archaeology While Mapping an Empire: Using Historical Maps to Reconstruct Ancient Settlement Landscapes in Modern India and Pakistan. This uses the theoretical techniques developed there with a real world example, the devastating Indus flood of 1909 that le… >

This article, in a volume in honor of the "father" of Central Asian Archaeology, Victor Sarianidi, is a solid recap of the many connections between the ancient Indus civilization and contemporary Central Asian cultures. >

"British scholarship of Indian history during the colonial period produced an essentialist construct of an Indian cultural tradition that was deemed unchanged since antiquity and recoverable through archaeological excavations" (p. 31) writes the author, a Professor of History at Shiv Nadar Universi… >