A paper examining and interpreting climate models and the history of water supply as it pertains to the Indus Valley civilization (including dramatic changes in precipitation and shifts in the Ravi River among the rerouting of other streams and tributaries).
This paper considers one aspect of the research conducted by the Italian Archaeological Mission in Sindh, more specifically the discovery of the Indus flint mines of the III millennium BC in the Rohri Hills, and the excavations carried out at flint mine RH962.
"The discovery of Indus seals manufactured with non-Indus raw materials, but with tools and techniques associated with Indus productions, further supports the idea that merchants and craftsmen from the greater Indus Valley were living and working at interior settlements in the Oman peninsula."
Another sign of the growing importance of archaeobotanical datasets and the way in which qualitative and quantitative analysis can be used to paint a richer picture of something as complex as agriculture and nutrition in ancient Indus times.
"Fish remains from archaeological sites have the capacity to offer a tremendous amount of information on social issues in addition to the more traditional goals of subsistence studies related to procurement strategies and seasonality," writes the author.
"In the study of the archaeology of early complex societies in archaeology three questions concerning power are of interest: (1) Who had power? (2) Why did they have power? And (3) How was power exercised? "
Another important and recent (October 2020) paper by Asko Parpola. He examines the 2018 finds from the Late Harappan site of Sanauli near Delhi in light of his research on early Indo-Aryan languages in the subcontinent and their origin in Central Asia.
A comprehensive look at what we know about agricultural strategies during the ancient Indus period, and how truly varied and sophisticated these most likely were, with careful adaptation to local conditions and water availability.
As Dr. Rafique Mughal leads the first major excavation at the site of Ganweriwala in the Cholistan desert – an exceptionally exciting development in ancient Indus archaeology – it is well worth reviewing his earlier papers, many of which were published in Pakistani archaeological journals forty or more years ago.