Seals

Looking beneath the Veneer Thoughts about Environmental and Cultural Diversity in the Indus Civilization

"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.

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Mohenjo-daro and Interregional Connections in the Indus Civilization: Evidence from Inscribed Seals

Gregg M. Jamison

One way to understand the connections between ancient Indus sites, often separated by enormous distances, is to look ever more closely at some of their smallest artefacts – in this case unicorn seals, usually merely 5 cm square.

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The Tiny Steatite Seals of Harappa

Richard H. Meadow

A closer look at the tablets discovered at Harappa during HARPS excavations and the locations where they were discovered at the site.

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Toponyms, Directions and Tribal Names in the Indus Script

Iravatham Mahadevan

A recent paper by the late Iravatham Mahadevan and his collaborator M.V. Bhaskar looks at signs in the Indus script that can be related to physical features in the landscape, and how this might play out in terms of interpreting them. A number of interpretations seem to fit together nicely.

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Debt and inequality: Comparing the “means of specification” in the early cities of Mesopotamia and the Indus civilization

Adam S. Green

"Debt lurks in the shadow of reciprocity," is the wonderful starting sentence of this paper. Highly theoretical, it opens up important questions about seals in the ancient Indus and Mesopotamian civilizations and their role in the system of administrative control which helped integrate society at the dawn of urban civilization.

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The Indus Seals: An Overview of Iconography and Style

Jonathan Mark Kenoyer

This paper examines the nature of Indus seals and the different aspects of seal iconography and style in order to better understand their overall role in the Indus civilization.

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Private Person or Public Persona? Use and Significance of Standard Indus Seals as Markers of Formal Socio-Economic Identities

Dennys Frenez

This deeply investigative article published in Walking with the Unicorn (2018) takes on some of the most unusual facts about ancient Indus seals to surmise about their function in the Indus polity as a whole.

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The Origin, Context and Function of the Indus Script: Recent Insights from Harappa

Jonathan Mark Kenoyer

Based on recent excavations at Harappa, it is possible to determine that square seals with animal motifs (such as the elephant) and possibly the short horned bull are among the earliest form of seal with writing.

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Dilmun-Meluhhan Relations Revisited in Light of Observations on Early Dilmun Seal Production during the City IIa-c Period (c. 2050-1800 BC)

Eric Oldijam

A fascinating article from the mammoth Walking with the Unicorn book that delves into the brief, intense life of ancient Indus-inspired seals in Dilmun (Bahrain) around 2000 BCE.

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Seals and Sculptures of the Indus Cities

Jonathan Mark Kenoyer

An exhibition being held in New York and Madison, Wisconsin, in 1998 on the representational art of the Indus Valley reveals a highly developed artistic tradition with many styles and techniques of production.

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