This paper focusses on "the distinctive Indus characteristic of inventing and diffusing elaborated techniques for the production of small, valuable objects, especially ornaments." Not only does it trace in a broad sense, "the general picture of technical development in the greater Indus region, extending from the Neolithic period to the end of the Indus period and beyond" (p. 115) – it also seeks to see what these developments may imply about social and technical organization. For managing and implementing the complex craftsmanship that the development of Indus goods on an increasingly small and complex scale required would have necessitated a similarly complex social and organizational structure. In other words what is impressive about this paper is the attempt to use the micro to infer patterns on the macro level, to read from the smallest to the larger forces or structures that would have allowed such a concentration of effort on an increasingly tiny object scale. This paper is a superb example of a consistent thought piece and argument about what makes the Indus civilization so unique and interesting.
The authors use a series of two axis charts (see Fig. 2) to represent how the increasing degree of technological elaboration would have implied a more extensive bureaucratic infrastructure to support. There are also timelines around talc production (for steatite used for all sorts of products from seals to beads) from 6500-2000 BCE. They note that Indus "innovations tend to expand the number of steps in production, particularly through the application of pyrotechnology. These techniques allow the production of objects made from a variety of materials, many of them 'artificial" – that is new materials created through pyrotechnology, such as metals, terracotta and stoneware, carnelian and etched agate, and the various components of the talc/faience complex described below (Vidale 2000, see also Jarrige 1995)," (p. 116).
Indeed, as pyrotechnology advanced, and "when firing was incoporated into talc bead manufacturing cycles, tese technical sequences became structurally more similar to pottery making and metal working; this innovation increased the structural comparability among different craft professions," (p. 119). This ability to see the bigger picture is part of what makes the paper so valuable, and they authors after a few more steps in explaining similarities among crafts utilizing high temperatures, are able to speculate that "interdependence would thus have encouraged the location of these complex crafts in central places, particularly cities, not only because of the presence of markets and/or controlling elites, but also to facilitate the exchange of information and materials between different crafts (Törnqvist 1969)," (p. 119).
As crafts became more sophisticated, emphasis would have shifted from foreign regions as suppliers of raw materials to markets for finished materials. There is also clearly in Indus sites the production of imitative goods, e.g. terracotta versions of carnelian beads – "the material employed multiplied" (p. 120) – so that we may infer that "an extended hierarchy of base materials might have been the most efficient key for categorizing a diversifying social pyramid," (p. 120-121). Just as the wealthy wear designer jeans, real diamonds and silk today, while those with less resources wear standard jeans, costume jewelry and polyester, so too Indus people seem to have had more and less valuable (in materials and intensity of workmanship) social status signifiers. The authors try to relate this to the larger complexity of social formations by drawing on literature that shows that chiefdoms with unstable political formations tend to value rare exotic material brought from distant places, while more complex, stable societies "favour the use of status markers produced by more elaborated technologies, often with complex pyrotechnologial treatments, but exploiting local, cheap base materials," (p. 122).
There is a lot to think about in this paper, and while some of the implications brought up, like the connection to a post-Indus caste system, may seem to be stretching the point or less firmly based in practices across cultures, it is a remarkably consistent attempt to weave together many different strands of what we know about Indus goods and materials to sketch a rich theoretical portrait of the social and political economy that enabled such complex innovation to emerge.
Images
1. Steatite beads from the Early Harappan Periods at Harappa.
2. Classification of some relevant craft industries of the Indus region during the Indus Integration Era (c. 2600-1900 BC) in terms of relative degress of technological elaboration and difficulty of access and procurement.