Writing

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

"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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Indus Script: Search for Grammar

Nisha Yadav

Indus Script: Search for Grammar is based on a lecture first given at the Chennai Seminar The Indus Script: Problems and Prospects in 2006 with an update in Dec. 2007.

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Indus Seals and Glyptic Studies: An Overview

Asko Parpola

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).

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Probabilistic Analysis of an Ancient Undeciphered Script

Rajesh P. N. Rao

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.

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The Indus Script and Economics. A Role for Indus Seals and Tablets in Rationing and Administration of Labor

Rajesh P. N. Rao

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.

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The Indus Fish Swam in the Great Bath

Iravatham Mahadevan

Iravatham Mahadevan considers this late 2011 paper to be "one of the most important papers I have written."

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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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Indus Script: A Study of its Sign Design

Nisha Yadav

A recent essay on the structural design of signs in the Indus script by experts at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research.

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The Murghabo-Bactrian Archaeological Complex and the Indus Script

Elisabeth C.L. During Caspers

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.

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Inscribed Objects from Harappa Excavations 1986-2007

Jonathan Mark Kenoyer

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).

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