Trade

Articles on economics, monetary system, standardized weights and measurements, commerce, and trade of the ancient Indus Valley people and other nearby civilizations

The Harappa Project 1986-1989: New Investigation at an Ancient Indus City

George F. Dales

The long-term objectives of this research focus on developing a better understanding of the cultural, economic and social history of Harappa as a discrete urban phenomenon and also its role in the development and life of the Indus Civilization as a whole. >

New excavations at the Umm an-Nar site Ras al-Hadd HD-1, Sultanate of Oman (seasons 2016–2018): insights on cultural interaction and long-distance trade

Maurizio Cattani

"Recent discoveries of Indus and Indus related materials at sites in the interior, and a general reassessment of comparable materials throughout Oman, suggest a more complex model of interaction. . . these artefacts probably reflect the presence of small groups of Indus merchants and craftspeople integrated into local communities and directly involved with important socioeconomic activities." >

Indus Valley: Early Commercial Connections with Central and Western Asia

Dennys Frenez

A must-read paper for those fascinated by the extensive trade networks that the ancient Indus civilization was integrated with. Infused with the latest research from the many regions in question, it summarizes and delves into the evidence of people, texts, animals, minerals and plants to seals and weights, pottery, stone, metal and ivory objects, statues, games and toys and more. >

Measuring the Harappan World: Insights into the Indus Order and Cosmology

Jonathan Mark Kenoyer

An overview of the types of artifacts that inform us about ancient Harappan measurement systems in order to gain insight into their concepts of order and cosmology. >

Materializing Harappan identities: unity and diversity in the borderlands of the Indus Civilization

Brad Chase

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? >

Animal movement on the hoof and on the cart and its implications for understanding exchange within the Indus Civilisation

Cameron A. Petrie

It seems to be an adage around the ancient Indus research that solving one mystery simply surfaces another. This is the case with this paper. It takes on the question of ground – land – transportation in ancient Indus times only to find that larger answers around transport remain fuzzy. We know tha… >

Harappa Weights

Nisha Yadav

A statistical analysis of commonly found Indus weights, which seem to be in the ratio, 3000:1600: 300: 200: 150: 60: 32: 16: 8: 4: 2: 1. >

Indus and Mesopotamian Trade Networks: New Insights from Shell and Carnelian Artifacts

Jonathan Mark Kenoyer

A judicious review of the evidence for trade between the ancient Indus and Mesopotamia, with a focus on prestige objects like carnelian beads and shell bangles and the implications and questions we may draw from them about the nature of the connections between both civilizations. >

The Short-Horned Bull on the Indus Seals: a Symbol of the Families in the Western Trade?

Massimo Vidale

A superb, thought-provoking paper by one of the most imaginative and interesting of ancient Indus archaeologists, able to reconcile the bigger picture with data and suppositions that often fit together very nicely. They certainly do in this paper. >

Weights at Chanhu-darho

A. S. Henny

The famous article on the weights at Chanhi-darho by A.S. Henny, from Ernest J.H. Mackay original excavation reports. Chanhu-daro was an Indus manufacturing town in Sindh excavated by the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston starting in 1929. >