Crocodile in the Indus Civilization and later South Asian traditions
Asko Parpola presents a wide-ranging investigation of the evidence of crocodiles in the Indus Civilization and later traditions.
Ancient Indus civilization articles which can be downloaded and read as PDF files from this site.
Why so many different stones? The Late (Upper) Palaeolithic record of Sindh reconsidered
The research carried out in Sindh during the last forty years, and the study of the chipped stone assemblages stored in Karachi University collections, show that Late (Upper) Palaeolithic [50,000-10,000 years ago] complexes are known from at least five regions of Sindh. Most sites are located close to good quality raw material outcrops and freshwater sources.
Private Person or Public Persona? Use and Significance of Standard Indus Seals as Markers of Formal Socio-Economic Identities
This deeply investigative article published in Walking with the Unicorn (2018) takes on some of the most unusual facts about ancient Indus seals to surmise about their function in the Indus polity as a whole.
Gregory Louis Possehl (1941-2011)
On his ninth death anniversary, a tribute to the American archaeologist Gregory M. Possehl, one of the most prolific writers on the ancient Indus civilization – no less than eight books by Possehl are listed on this site, many of them massive tomes, covering all aspects of Indus civilization.
Social change at the Harappan settlement of Gola Dhoro: a reading from animal bones
"A detailed analysis of the animal bone assemblage at Gola Dhoro here throws light on the expansion of the Indus civilisation into Gujarat. A square fort, imposed on a settlement of livestock herders in the later third millennium BC, was shown to have contained people who introduced a broader diet of meat and seafood, and new ways of preparing it. These social and dietary changes were coincident with a surge in craft and trade."
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
The Story of an Ancient Dock: Lothal in the History of the Indian Ocean
Shereen Ratnagar writes with a crystalline, no-nonsense intelligence about Lothal and its famous "dockyard" in a way that both uplifts and contextualizes this strange feature of a relatively small Harappan site.
Faking it? X-Ray Diffraction Analysis of Beads from Kotada Badli Reveals Evidence for Imitation Steatite in Harappan Gujarat
An intriguing article in the way it creates multiple openings in thinking about ancient Indus society. The subject is a set of three of four beads found at a rural "Sorath Harappan" site (2300-1900 BCE) in Gujarat.
Excavations at Shikarpur, Gujarat 2008-2009
Continuing work by the archaeologists at MSU University in Baroda including new seals and classical Harappan pottery finds.
A Statistical Approach for Pattern Search in Indus Writing
The first of a continuing series of articles by scientists at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) undertaking a scientific analysis of Indus sign patterns.