How did the ancient Indus civilization end? The paper argues that the Indus “collapse” after roughly 1900 BC was a regionally varied transformation, not a single abrupt event, and that exchange with the Arabian Peninsula at least continued into the early 2nd millennium BCE. This was likely likely via Gujarat (Sorath Harappan) more than with the so-called Jhukar culture that followed in the Lower Indus region and Mohenjo-daro. It uses Late Harappan settlement and economic changes and ceramic comparisons to reframe what “interaction” looked like after Indus urban institutions (distinct script, seals, standard weights) disappeared.
Dr. Wright reviews evidence for the Late Harappan/Post-urban period across key regions including the Upper Indus/Harappa, Lower Indus/Mohenjo-daro and Chanhu-daro, Gujarat/Saurashtra and Kutch, and adjacent areas like Baluchistan and Rajasthan. She is able to show both continuity and change in occupation, economy, and institutions in these regions as the ancient Indus civilization seems to have declined and its institutions like seals with inscribed writing and "unicorns" are not found anymore after about 1900 BCE. At Harappa, she emphasizes continuity in some crafts and pottery alongside major economic shifts like the greater importance of summer crops and greater amounts of barley consumed. Household-scale crop processing also seems to have risen. In the Lower Indus, she discusses urban disrepair at Mohenjo-daro and the Jhukar ceramic phase, rejecting older “invasion/intrusion” explanations in favor of a transitional local development that nonetheless marks a regional break. For example, Jhukar pottery is found only in some areas, and there is a notable absence of terracotta figurines that were abundant in Indus times throughout the region. In Gujarat/Saurashtra, she stresses that trajectories were diferent. Some major sites ceased key industries or show civic breakdown, while other Saurashtra sites like Rojdi may show resilience and even revitalization, possibly linked to population movements.
The net of this is that not only were the people highly adaptable, able to vary crop strategies in response to increasingly documented changes in monsoon patterns, but that the transition to new cultural arteiacts and presumably social and political orders could have happened gradually or at least not as suddenly as one might have presumed.
The relationship of these post-Indus cultures to external trade is then addressed through “intrusive” Indus-origin ceramic storage jars and fine wares found at sites in the Arabian Gulf like Saar and Qala’at al-Bahrain, or Ra’s al-Jinz in Oman. Wright compares vessel forms, motifs, slips, and technological traits across Sorath Harappan (Rojdi), Late Harappan (Lothal), and Jhukar assemblages, concluding that the closest parallels for many Gulf examples lie with Sorath Harappan. For example, of the beautiful large jar from Bahrain [shown above], "from Karzakhan Cemetery at Hamad Town (S. T. Laursen, pers. comm. [Season 1982-83, BNN, Burial Mound 1, Grave 20, Square D5]) carries a peacock design that is represented at both Rojdi and Lothal [in Gujarat] and the slip could match wares from both Rojdi and Lothal. These various examples raise questions about the origins of the ceramics in Bahrain and elsewhere. Either of the above-illustrated jars might match the red slip on Late Harappan types from Lothal, where they are described simply as ‘light to dull red’," (pp. 107-8).
The paper’s biggest contribution is its insistence on regional variability and resilience, avoiding single cause “collapse” narratives and tying environmental, economic, and institutional changes to evidence from archaeo-botany, zoo-archaeology and paleo-environmental research. It rethinks Gulf contacts by asking what kinds of reorganized networks may have continued when other Indus administrative technologies faded. The author is well-aware of the limited evidence we have, but is still able to draw our attention to what seems to have been an evolution of sorts between Indus culture and those that followed. People may have moved south and west but more slowly than we imagine when we draw firm boundaries between epochs and civilizations.
Dr. Wright suggests, based on evidence, that trade persisted with the Arabian Gulf despite administrative decline, which leads to questions about what social and political mechanisms replaced or bypassed Indus standardization (e.g. its weights and seals) in regulating value, trust, and contracts across wide distances.
Image: Fig. 6. Large jar with peacock motif (#A 19067: Karzakhan Cemetery, Hamad Town [Bahrain], Season 1986–87, Excavation Area: BSW, Burial Mound: 1, Grave 20, Square D5). Courtesy: S.T. Laursen.