Crafts

Articles on the various crafts and manufacturing activities during ancient Indus times.

Some Important Aspects of Technology and Craft Production in the Indus Civilization with Specific Reference to Gujarat

Kuldeep Bhan
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.

‘We are inheritors of a rural civilisation’: rural complexity and the ceramic economy in the Indus Civilisation in northwest India

Danika Parikh
The relationship between ancient Indus centers - which we know best and consider a hallmark of the civilization - and the vast rural "hinterland" that surrounded them is the subject of this lucid paper.

Indus potters in central Oman in the second half of the third millennium BC. First results of a technological and archaeometric study

Sophie Mery
"A wide range of Indus artefacts have been found over the past forty years at many coastal and inland sites in the Oman peninsula, including utilitarian and ritual pottery, ornaments, seals, weights and, more recently, terracotta toys for children," write the authors.

Indus Stone Beads in the Ghaggar Plain with a Focus on the Evidence from Farmana and Mitathal

Akinori Uesugi
The first in-depth look at stone beads from Indus sites besides Harappa, in this case two just south of Rakigarhi. Stone beads include those made of steatite (the vast majority, about 91%), carnelian (8%), as well as jasper, agate, lapis luzuli, limestone and more. Steatite and carnelian beads are found at levels corresponding to all time periods.

Setting the wheels in motion: Re-examining ceramic forming techniques in Indus Civilisation villages in northwest India

Alessandro Ceccarelli
"The discovery of the rotational capabilities of the wheel was one of the most significant human inventions, and wheel-enhanced rotation is now pervasive in the tools and machines that we use in our everyday lives. Importantly, the wheel was a major contributor to a range of developments in craft production technology, perhaps most visibly in the various forms of potter’s rotational devices and wheels."

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