An Indus Scale
Chapter 5 from Sudeshna Guha's bestselling A History of India Through 75 Objects (2022), includes a little-known object described as a ‘measure of length’ by Ernest Mackay.
Heterarchic Powers in the Ancient Indus Cities
This thoughtful and enlightening paper starts with a clear statement of the writer's point-of-view: "On the other hand, to keep writing that Indus society in the 3rd millennium BC was uniform, acephalous, egalitarian and classless, that it was not a state, that its people rejected violence, elites
Indus zoomorphism and its avatars
A technical paper which rewards the follower with valuable insights and serves, on a platter as it were, some complex puzzles in Indus iconography for further cogitation to the reader.
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?
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.
Documenting Mohenjo-Daro: Digitization and Visualization of Architecture, Infrastructure, and Artefacts from DK-G South
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.
The Indus Script: Invention and Use of a Bronze Age Writing System
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.
Decolonizing South Asia through Heritage- and Nation-Building
"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.
Split Appearance. Patchy and Coherent Features in Fragments of Gameplay, Mohenjo-daro, Sindh
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.
Material Culture and Childhood in Harappan South Asia
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