A Geologic Provenance Study of Harappa's Rock and Mineral Assemblage

A Book by Randall William Law

New Introductory Paragraph by Randall Law, 2024

I wish to express my deepest gratitude to Omar Khan for making my book entitled Inter-Regional Interaction and Urbanism in the Ancient Indus Valley: A Geologic Provenience Study of Harappa's Rock and Mineral Assemblage available to all on Harappa.com. The book’s title is a concise description of its subject matter and if it reads like a dissertation that’s because it is. Under the supervision of Prof. Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, my PhD thesis of the same name was completed in 2008 at the Department of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin-Madison. This book, which is an updated and expanded version of that thesis, was published in 2011 by the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature in Kyoto, Japan as well as by Manohar Publishers & Distributors in New Delhi, India.

A large (420mb) pdf of the entire 830 page book can be downloaded via this link.

Here, the book has been divided into twelve sections with links to smaller, more manageable pdfs. The sections contain introductory and background materials, chapters focusing on individual material types, a summary and concluding statement, and extensive appendices and references.

Randall Law, March 2024

Grindingstone Acquisition Networks

Groundstone implements are, in terms of total weight, by far the most abundant kind of stone artifact found at Harappa. Included in this category are querns, mortars, mullers, pestles, whetstones, burnishers and adzes. >

Chert Acquisition Networks

Indus Civilization peoples, although heavy consumers of copper and skilled producers of copper-alloy implements, still chose to utilize chert to manufacture many of the tools (blades, drills, scrapers, awls, etc.) that they used in their daily lives. >