Using Indus Valley expertise to tackle some Current Issues in South Asia
A clever paper looking at how far we have drifted from some of the better ancient Indus ways of living.
Ancient Indus civilization articles which can be downloaded and read as PDF files from this site.
The Prehistory of Sindh and Las Bela (Balochistan): Thirty years of surveys and excavations (1985-2014)
It has really only been since the 1980s that a more comprehensive picture of the wide and deep roots of Indus civilization in the larger Sindh and Balochistan region have become apparent. Mehrgarh did not spring out of nowhere but was embedded in a region where fishing, shell collecting, flint mining and other crafts were present and flourishing at different times.
Indus Administrative Technology - New Insights on Harappan Stamp Seals and their Impressions on Clay Tags
A richly illustrated slide journey through seals and sealings, how and why they were used in other ancient civilizations, and primarily what we might know and deduce about their use in ancient Indus cities. Dennys Frenez has been studying a large group of accidentally fired Lothal sealings for many years, and is joined by other distinguished archaeologists in what was originally a symposium on bead and seal technologies at the University of Padua, Italy, in 2019.
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.
Peaceful Harappans? Reviewing the evidence for the absence of warfare in the Indus Civilisation of north-west India and Pakistan (c. 2500-1900 BC)
Whether or not the ancient Indus civilization was peaceful or not has intrigued a number of scholars and led to books like Jane McIntosh's A Peaceful Realm (2001). The apparent lack of weaponry and depictions of warfare, possibly ideas on the supposed egalitarianism of Indus civilization have led to a preponderance of this hypothesis.
The Chipped Stone Assemblage of the Tharro Hills
A first description of the chipped stone assemblage collected by A.R. Khan at the fortified Amri settlement of the Tharro Hills in Sindh.
A Diachronic Examination of Lithic Exchange Networks During the Urban Transformation of Harappa
The origins of manufacturing debris recovered from different periods of occupation between 3300 BCE and 1700 BCE at Harappa can now be identified with a high degree of certainty thanks to geologic source provenance studies.
Ancient Textiles of the Indus Valley Region
A brief overview of the major cultural traditions of the Indus region is presented along with a discussion of the current state of research on the most ancient textiles used by ancient peoples of this region.
Shell Working at Ancient Balakot, Pakistan
Balakot is one of four known ancient coastal sites in Pakistan dating to the period of South Asia's earliest civilization -- the Harappan (or Indus) -- that flourished in the centuries just before and after 2000 B.C.
Chaîne Opératoire in the Study of Stratified Societies
This paper discusses some theoretical questions and present some observations on the role of ethnoarchaeological studies of craft production in contemporary stratified social contexts, in the study of protohistoric societies.