Seals

Archaeologists studying the emergence of early civilizations often focus on finely crafted art objects in order to understand the aspects of economic, socio-political and religious organization. The importance of such objects is increased when studying early societies for which there are no written records, such as the Indus Valley civilization. >

Although much about Indus seals remains unknown, the steady application of rigorous, detailed analysis of a kind that earlier excavators could hardly dream of is slowly yielding clues and insights into the organization of work and craft in Indus cities. >

Shereen Ratnagar writes with a crystalline, no-nonsense intelligence about Lothal and its famous "dockyard" in a way that both uplifts and contextualizes this strange feature of a relatively small Harappan site. >

The assemblage of inscribed and incised objects discovered at the site of Harappa during excavations conducted between 1986–2007 by the Harappa Archaeological Research Project (HARP). >

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. >

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. >

A brief introduction to the Indus Tradition and then focuses on the range of images relating to human and animal interactions that were used in the greater Indus region. >

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. >