Articles on inscriptions, the script or sign system, iconography and writing in the Indus Valley Civilization from the earliest appearances of potters marks on. Includes articles by leading scholars of the Indus script, including Asko Parpola and Iravatham Mahadevan.
First published by the IEEE Computer Society in 2010, this paper by a University of Washington Professor analyzes the count of signs and combinations in the Indus script. >
A proof of this upcoming survey article by the dean of Indus script scholarship, Asko Parpola, is now available on Academia.edu; it will be published in the highly anticipated Seals and Sealing in the Ancient World (Cambridge, 2018). >
One day Artificial Intelligence (AI) could be of great help in reading ancient Indus inscriptions. There are likely to be many steps before we get there however. >
An insightful article that focusses on the clues in a seal and set of sixteen tablets found together at Harappa in 1997 to proffer that they may have been economic tokens. >
During the second half of the 3rd millennium BC, the Harappan Civilization covered an area of over one million square kilometers in South Asia, from the Afghan highlands to western India. Excavations at large urban sites like Harappa, Mohenjo-daro, and Dholavira, as well as at smaller production si… >
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. >
Harappa Site Plan Until quite recently, the common view of the Indus Civilization has been as a phenomenon largely undifferentiated in space and time over more than 500,000 sq km and the 500 to 700 years of its existence (2600/2500-2000/1900 B.C.). With continuing archaeological work … >
An interesting article in which the author discusses the existence of Indus-type seals in the Gulf and Mesopotamian regions, their relationship to trade and other civilizations in the area, including the Central Asian Bronze Age civilization now better known as the BMAC (Bactrio-Margiana Archaeological Complex). After carefully reviewing the evidence for Indus settlers in ancient Mesopotamia, and their use Indus-type seals whose signs are ordered in ways not found within the Indus region proper, she discusses the relationships they may still have had with Indus peoples back home and the role of different kinds of writing in this relationship. >
