A Note on the Muruku Sign of the Indus Script in light of the Mayiladuthurai Stone Axe Discovery
A proposed Indus sign reading of Muruku on a stone axe found in South India.
Online articles on the ancient Indus Valley civilization, usually available as a PDF on another site like Academia.edu.
Mapping Archaeology While Mapping an Empire: Using Historical Maps to Reconstruct Ancient Settlement Landscapes in Modern India and Pakistan
Science is slowly transforming ancient Indus studies, from DNA analysis of skeletons that point to migration and disease, to isotope analysis that reveals the distant origins of raw materials. One of the cleverest – and potentially rewarding i terms of increasing the number of ancient sites to investigate – must be the use of old maps.
Mirrored signs. Administrative and scriptorial information in the Indus Civilization clay sealings
So much attention has been focused on seals, that we sometimes forget that sealings was their most prosaic and basic function: making impressions on clay or other humble materials to perform some sort of basic administrative functions.
Split Appearance. Patchy and Coherent Features in Fragments of Gameplay, Mohenjo-daro, Sindh
An interesting paper which looks at the extensive finds of what are likely game pieces, boards and other related artifacts from Mohenjo-daro. The author tries to relate finds at the site with contexts, and while this is difficult given poor documentation from earlier excavations, it does seem as if game play was extensive.
Beginnings of Indian Astronomy with Reference to a Parallel Development in China
An impressive paper by one of the Indus script's most important interpreters and theorists looks at the origins of astronomy in the subcontinent.
Remote Sensing and Historical Morphodynamics of Alluvial Plains. The 1909 Indus Flood and the City of Dera Ghazi Khan (Province of Punjab, Pakistan)
The second article of a pair with Mapping Archaeology While Mapping an Empire: Using Historical Maps to Reconstruct Ancient Settlement Landscapes in Modern India and Pakistan. This uses the theoretical techniques developed there with a real world example, the devastating Indus flood of 1909 that led
Priest-Kings or Puritans? Childe and Willing Subordination in the Indus
An interesting series of reflections on how we have viewed the ancient Indus through the prism of whatever archaeological priorities or worldviews were in fashion then, and how the evidence, slowly, can push against these preconceptions.
Shikarpur lithic assemblage: New questions regarding Rohri chert blade production
The intriguing question this paper takes on is whether or not chert blade (also known as flint, used for lighting fires) production could have taken place here, 500 km as the crow flies from the Rohri Flint Quarries, a massive site with evidence for mining going back hundreds of thousands of years and covered in detail by numerous scholars.
Weights at Chanhu-darho
The famous article on the weights at Chanhi-darho by A.S. Henny, from Ernest J.H. Mackay original excavation reports. Chanhu-daro was an Indus manufacturing town in Sindh excavated by the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston starting in 1929.
The Murghabo-Bactrian Archaeological Complex and the Indus Script
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.