"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. The first sentence speaks to one important aspect of this control system - recording and postponing exchange and obligation, recording what is owed by one party to another, a function that we know Mesopotamian seals in part satisfied because we can read cuneiform. We do not have that luxury with ancient Indus seals where the signs are still - sadly! - undeciphered. Dr. Green does not let that detract him from offering interesting comparisons and exploring analogies in what other data about seals – and the positives struck from them, sealings – in both civilizations may tell us.

Green's key argument is that "means of specification"—the physical and administrative methods used to define and enforce debts—play a critical role in either promoting balanced reciprocity or enabling extractive social relationships. In Mesopotamia, the use of seals and sealings by political and religious institutions led to a class-based system where these tools became symbols of social control, allowing a ruling class to enforce interest-bearing debts and extract wealth continuously from subordinated groups. By contrast, in the Indus civilization, seals were more widely distributed and accessible, fostering what he sees as a form of balanced reciprocity that facilitated cooperation and relatively equitable exchange without consolidating power in a centralized ruling class.

Green believes that the Indus was largely egalitarian civilization, as discussed for example in his paper Killing the Priest-King: Addressing Egalitarianism in the Indus Civilization (which is critiqued on this site). There he also uses seals to support his egalitarianism argument, in addition the absence of certain material evidence (e.g., the apparent lack of monumental architecture) to infer egalitarianism. It doesn’t account for less visible forms of social hierarchy, or other evidence for elites but it is interesting to note that in Indus society, seals were part of day-to-day life and accessible across social strata, given the way so many were found in residential areas of Mohenjo-daro which he nicely charts (see Image 2 above). This he infers encouraged balanced reciprocity and exchange among corporate groups. Meanwhile, in Mesopotamia, a managerial elite’s monopolization of seals allowed the transformation of reciprocity into an extractive, interest-based system that perpetuated inequalities.

He also draws nice parallels between the two civilizations on the specialized nature of seal manufacture - they were precious objects, not easy to copy, on valuable or highly processed materials. With Indus seals once also has the fact that three out of four typical stamp seals feature the "unicorn." The animal or composite creature images on Indus seals, as well as other facts lead him to "suggest that the right to use a particular Indus seal image was shared by multiple individuals. If so, then each Indus seal image could have been the corporate property of all the individuals (seal users?) denoted in the inscriptions associated with that image. If people shared these images, it is not unreasonable to speculate that they may also have shared other forms of corporate property. Thus, a typical Indus seal materialized the connection between a particular seal user and their corporate group," (p. 10).

In another context, he draws further contrasts: "These patterns suggest that in the Indus, stamp seals were more widely used by numerous and diverse corporate groups, predominately in urban contexts, to record many different kinds of exchange, while in Mesopotamia, sealings were often curated by hierarchical political institutions–temples and palaces–that used them to account for payments into and out of centralized surpluses."

Whether or not one agrees with all of Green's conjectures or egalitarianism frame, this highly recommended article provides many valuable insights and raises important questions about how two early societies’ material cultures that we know were in touch with each other influenced their socio-economic structures.

Images: 1. Photograph of an Indus seal from each side. Reproduced from Green (2015:2). The seal was originally numbered DK 3930 in Mackay (1938) and is numbered M-225 in the Corpus of Indus Seals and Inscriptions, and Accession Number 63.10/43 in the Central Antiquities Collection of the Archaeological Survey of India. Photograph by the author.
2. Relative distribution of seals uncovered during the initial excavations seasons at Mohenjo-daro. The density of objects is inferred from the tables published in Marshall (1931) and Mackay (1938). Note that the majority of the structures uncovered in the eastern mounds have been classified as houses. Data are projected in WSG 1984 on Google Earth Imagery (accessed 2019) using QGIS 3.8.