Mohenjo-daro

Diversity, variability, adaptation and ‘fragility’ in the Indus Civilization

A superb framing of how we might think of the Indus civilization and its evolution as a larger entity in comparison and contrast with other ancient civilizations. How did Indus cities fit into a rural context? Were they ruled by elites? How did they manage to survive so long?

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Heritage, Archaeology and the Indus Civilization

Sudeshna Guha

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.

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Documenting Mohenjo-Daro: Digitization and Visualization of Architecture, Infrastructure, and Artefacts from DK-G South

Uzma Z. Rizvi

Another example of how modern data science and the re-analysis of data collected by early archaeologists are opening new frontiers of discovery. In this case, finds made in one area of Mohenjo-daro, excavated by K.N. Dikshit, are being tabulated and located precisely in relation to other objects and the strata or level they were found at.

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The Indus Script: Invention and Use of a Bronze Age Writing System

Dennys Frenez

A well-illustrated 140 slide PDF that explores the Indus script, origins, writing direction and more. While the slides by Indus scholar Dennys Frenez lack his narration, many of the slides are self-explanatory and provide a rich visual overview of the Indus civilization its writing and the many issues involved.

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Decolonizing South Asia through Heritage- and Nation-Building

Sudeshna Guha

"British scholarship of Indian history during the colonial period produced an essentialist construct of an Indian cultural tradition that was deemed unchanged since antiquity and recoverable through archaeological excavations" (p.

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Split Appearance. Patchy and Coherent Features in Fragments of Gameplay, Mohenjo-daro, Sindh

Elke Rogersdotter

An interesting paper which looks at the extensive finds of what are likely game pieces, boards and other related artifacts from Mohenjo-daro. The author tries to relate finds at the site with contexts, and while this is difficult given poor documentation from earlier excavations, it does seem as if game play was extensive.

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Material Culture and Childhood in Harappan South Asia

Supriya Varma

A comprehensive roundup of all that we seem to know about toys in the ancient Indus Valley from The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Childhood

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Killing the Priest-King: Addressing Egalitarianism in the Indus Civilization

Adam S. Green

A provocative paper which claims that "the Indus civilization reveals that a ruling class is not a prerequisite for social complexity" (p. 1). The author, who is at Cambridge University where he has long been involved with the groundbreaking Two Rains project, starts with John Marshall and other

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The Indus Script: Origins, Use and Disappearance

Jonathan Mark Kenoyer

"The contexts of script and changes in the writing over time indicate that the Indus script was versatile and that it was probably used to communicate complex ideas as well as multiple languages.

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Workers in the Night and the Indus Civilization

Rita P. Wright

"The theme of this volume has forced us to consider and grapple with what activities occur at night and how that can be applicable to the archaeological record of the Indus civilization. In doing so we have focused on water and sewage system maintenance, a traditional nighttime activity of the modern world, to demonstrate how the common spaces and activities of maintenance would have constructed a shared sense of belonging for participants and/or imposed shared identities upon them by outside viewers," write the authors.

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