A detailed study of ceramic artifacts which augments basic knowledge by delving into the technical aspects of the processes of production used to craft these objects. >
This paper illustrates the different types of technology that was used for firing pottery and terracotta objects in the greater Indus region in the third milliennium B.C.E. Using excavation data from the Kachi Plain (Mehrgarh, Lal Shah and Naushoro), Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, Miller develops a classification for the range of firing structures and technologies. >
"For archaeologists," write the authors, "pottery is one of the most significant sources of data, not only for the durability and abundance of ceramic artefacts in the archaeological record, but also for the vast range of information on ancient societies that can be inferred from its study." >
"The recognition of variation and diversity [in the ancient Indus civilization] has encouraged a gradual, though not universally accepted, shift toward the interpretation that certain categories of Indus material acted as ‘a veneer… overlying diverse local and regional cultural expressions'," write the authors. >
The authors take on the complex question of how Harappan or Indus culture made its presence felt in Gujarat from about the middle of the third millennium through the decline of Indus civilization six or seven hundred years later. How did Indus traditions as expressed in material culture and the manufacture of these objects relate to what we see in Indus cities like Mohenjo-daro and Harappa? >
Very little is known about the so-called "Amri Phase," as this author refers to an apparently pre-Indus civilization site in Sindh that dates to the 4th millennium BCE. >
