The famous article on the weights at Chanhi-darho by A.S. Henny, from Ernest J.H. Mackay original excavation reports. Chanhu-daro was an Indus manufacturing town in Sindh excavated by the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston starting in 1929. >
An article by Dorothy MacKay, wife of Ernest J.H. Mackay, describing excavations in 1935-36 at the ancient Indus manufacturing site of Chanhu-daro, 80 miles south of Mohenjo-daro. This illustrated July 1937 article from the popular US magazine Asia is a nice summary of the finds at this sophisticated ancient Indus site where, among other things, long carnelian beads, toys, seals and weights were made. >
The results of a three-day visit to the site in March 1984 by two experienced Indus archaeologists, the first such visit since Chanhu-daro was excavated in the 1930s by E.H. Mackay. >
As part of his 1935-36 excavation report on Chanhudaro, Ernest Mackay has a section on "Paste Plaques and Cylinders," two types of objects that were made of the same material, and were found in large quantities and occurring together across the excavated area of Mound II. The material was "...white, porous...with a texture like a fine pumice but sufficiently friable to be scraped away easily with the finger nail." >
The beauty of this paper is that it sets out very clearly the procedure needed to document bead types, the careful measurement and classification steps to start understanding a specific bead tradition. >
It is really nice in a paper to be able to speak both of what is happening now, at the cutting-edge of bead and shell-making Indus craftsmanship and continuing discoveries, and be able to relate each tradition back to its earliest appearance in the subcontinent and elsewhere. >
"When we speak of Harappan material style, we need to include the whole package of raw material, technological know-how as well as shape and pattern," writes Dr. Heidi J. Miller, who goes on to present "a preliminary study of what defines a Harappan phase ceramic assemblage by comparing the assemblages from the sites of Harappa in the Punjab, Mohenjo-daro and the smaller site of Chanhu-daro, both in Sindh, and illustrating what is shared amongst these contemporary occupations." >
An excellent distillation of where we stand to the "Bronze" in the Bronze Age Indus Civilization. "Besides clay," writes the author, "there is no other raw material that Indus craftspeople worked into such a diversity of forms and types of artifacts." >
