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Ancient Indus civilization articles which can be downloaded and read as PDF files from this site.

Contemporary Stone Beadmaking in Khambhat, India: Patterns of Craft Specialization and Organization of Production as Reflected in the Archaeological Record

Khambhat in Gujarat province provides a unique opportunity to study the organization of a specialized craft and understand how different aspects of social, economic and political organization relating to such crafts might be reflected in the archaeological record because of the long continuity of bead-making in this region,

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Summaries of Five Seasons of Research at Harappa: 1986-1990

George F. Dales

A 78 page overview of how 5 seasons of excavations at Harappa proceeded.

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Chronology and Interrelations Between Harappa and Central Asia

Jonathan Mark Kenoyer

Highlights of excavations of the Ravi and Kot Diji levels at Harappa which illustrate the emergence of complex crafts and trade, with a special emphasis on interaction with Central Asia. It also presents the excavations and experimental studies on the production of faience and steatite tablets.

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Bead Replicas: An Alternative to Antique Bead Collecting

Jonathan Mark Kenoyer

Passed from generation to generation as heirloorns, many beads link the past to the present, and over time, such antique beads gain incredible value because of their historical significance and in some cases, spiritual powers.

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Infection, Disease, and Biosocial Processes at the End of the Indus Civilization

Infection Disease and Biological Processes at the End of the Indus Civilization

Gwen Robbins Schug

A paper assessing evidence for paleopathology to infer the biological consequences of climate change and socio-economic disruption in the post-urban period at Harappa, one of the largest urban centers in the Indus Civilization.

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Faunal Remains and Urbanism at Harappa

Richard H. Meadow

Excavations at the third millennium BCE urban site of Harappa (Punjab, Pakistan) have produced a large quantity of mammal bone remains. Two features of this material-bone measurements and density of bone in excavation units are considered from the point of view of using aspects of assemblage variability to document faunal exploitation and site formation processes.

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On the Development of Indus Technical Virtuosity and Its Relation to Social Structure

Massimo Vidale

Indus craftsmanship of small objects and articles and the patterns of intricacies and experimentation in their production -- or Indus Valley technical virtuosity. The paper covers a thorough classification of artifacts and trends in their production over time.

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Archaeology and the Long Lineages of Tradition

Shereen Ratnagar

This paper in honor of Jean-Claude Gardin, in the words of the abstract, refers to a small body of work in order to scrutinize the way in which archaeologists of South Asia make inferences about long-enduring traditions.

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Etched (carnelian) beads from northeast and southeast Arabia

An De Waele

The authors look at the evidence of approximately 70 etched/bleached carnelian beads found from sites along the Arabian shores of the Persian Gulf (in Bahrain, Oman and the UAE) and hypothesize that these beads were imported from workshops on the Indian subcontinent, whether through direct or

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A new approach to tracking connections between the Indus Valley and Mesopotamia: initial results of strontium isotope analyses from Harappa and Ur

Jonathan Mark Kenoyer

An important paper that shows how strontium isotope analysis can help reveal the interactions between and migrations of people in ancient times. The authors write: "Human tooth enamel from Harappa and Ur was analyzed for strontium, oxygen, and carbon isotopes.

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