A richly illustrated slide journey through seals and sealings, how and why they were used in other ancient civilizations, and primarily what we might know and deduce about their use in ancient Indus cities. Dennys Frenez has been studying a large group of accidentally fired Lothal sealings for many years, and is joined by other distinguished archaeologists in what was originally a symposium on bead and seal technologies at the University of Padua, Italy, in 2019. Although not accompanied by extensive text, the headings and notes on the slides are informative enough to provide a comprehensive overview of the subject. The high-quality color illustrations, especially the recreations at the end around clay sealing technologies in different contexts given finds in Lothal and Dholavira, are extremely helpful. Many of the images are to be found nowhere else.
As the author writes, "this paper presents the stylistic, technological and functional studies carried out by the author on the stamp seals and their impressions on clay found at different Indus Civilization sites in Gujarat, India, including the primate urban centre, smaller specialized settlements and commercial entrepôts. The detailed and comprehensive approach applied allowed to stress similarities and variances respect to the sealing procedures as reconstructed for the Near East, as well as to define particularities of the administrative system and the storage technology in the Indus Civilization."