Also known as the Harappan Civilisation, the Indus Valley is a unique but highly sophisticated civilisation. Located in the Indian Subcontinent, near the Indus River, the Indus Valley dates from around 3300 to its fall in 1500BC.
The following post is a series of notes I have compiled based on a lecture by Mark Kenoyer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zcGLlLEbmI&list=TLPQMjYxMTIwMjCyIW_BtuQrCQ&index=2
A series of future posts will include further sources and target each aspect of this incredible culture thematically. From the lack of warfare and rulers, to trade and urban planning.
Phases
3300-1500BC
Area
Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro
Covers one of greatest regions than other societies
Interconnected, trade and genes between other civilisations
Each civilisation evolved on own trajectory, based on what works for them, sharing knowledge with others
Evolve alongside others in Indian subcontinent (Bactro-Margiana, Helmand, Baluchistan, Malwa, Ganga-vindhya, Deccan, Indus)
Merge into Indo-Gangetic Tradition
First empires in South Asia incorporate these early civilisations (300-400BC)
Foundation
Harappa, alluvial plain
First people settling in Harappa were connected to all areas Indus
Shell from sea, minerals from West/East
Bring to plain to make objects
First village in Harappa mound
Initially a flat plain, now 17m due to cultural development
Pottery (handmade not wheel), painted decoration
Inscriptions:
Potter's mark (identification)
Post-production markings (writing? same time writing develop elsewhere)
Ideology
Cosmology, way of seeing universe, developing
Establish social organisation
Swastika (originate cave paintings 10,000BC)
House ordered north-south and east-west (cardinal points)
Houses made of mud brick or reeds, wattle and daub
Hierarchy
Ornate styles developing
Shell bangles (800km away)
Thick = women heavy labour (or break)
Thin = women less manual labour
Clay = cheap
Image: Thick clay bangles indicated manual labour and thin ones indicate high status, thin bangles are less practical and would easily break in even tasks such as cooking
Trade
Begins around 2600BC
2450BC most common period
Indus materials from elsewhere
Randall Law: Map plotting location of all stones from Harappa
Ravi Phase people got things from North but also south Sujarat and Kutch
Made carnelian, lapis, jasper and hard stone beads (need technology)
Clay beads
Beads and lapis Lazuli from Afghanistan
Sealing from Gulf
Shell from Indus
Ev: Ur burial has shell cylinder seals from Indus and Lapis from Afghanistan and Persian Gulf
Indus not make cylinder seals, the shell was sold and carved to Mesopotamia
Ev: Dark green bloodstone made at Dholavira on Kutch is found from Akkadian period at burials of Ur in 2200-2100BC
Ev: Cylinder seal marked with 'this is the seal of a Meluhhan interpreter'
People did interpret for Meluhhan traders
Texts say Meluhhan villagers were there
Statements by Mesopotamian conquered Meluhhans (no evidence of warfare, but may have dominated villages)
Ev: Carnelian belt from Mohenjo-daro and Kish Beads from burials at Ur, made in Indus
Kish Beads made from stone not in the Indus (Agate) but made with technology of Indus craftsman
Indus craftsmen may live in Mesopotamia and make objects for elite courts
Ev: Faceted Carnelian Beads only made in Mesopotamia, never in Indus, but made by Indus technology
Catering to Mesopotamian elites
Trade routes
Mesopotamia, Persian Gulf, Central Asian and possibly China
Ev: beads from Zhous period (years after Indus)
Possibly beads handed down and then copied based on Indus craft by later China
How do we know it is Indus Technology?
Stone called Ernestite
Drills in Kish for drilling long beads in ernestite
Specialised drilling technology for straight and long columns through the beads
Technology for vesuvianite came only from Indus, and only carved via ernestite drill, found in Mesopotamia
Control of Trade and Production
Controlled production and technologies
Walls around cities and people have to pay taxes
Complex standardised weight systems, calibration almost identical
Cubic and truncated spherical weights (from Chanhudaro)
Very similar to Egyptians but no evidence of that connections
Mesopotamia did not have standardised weights (15 different numbering systems to count commodities)
Numbering systems
Cannot be translated but the number of slashes indicates number
4 key number
Passports
Trading with central Asia
Terracotta sealing with Central Asia seal on one side and Harappan on the other
Ev: Terracotta sealings with Central Asian and Harppan seal at Mohenjo-daro
Different Relationships
Indus seals in Mesopotamia but no Mesopotamian in Indus
Central Asian seals in Indus
Mesopotamian trade likely occur via Oman
Women from Harappa go to Mesopotamia?
Ev: Strontium analysis
Ev: Figurines in Indus have elaborate flower headdress, only time they are found in Mesopotamia is in Ur
Ravi Phase
3500-2800BC (Regionalisation Era)
Develop villages throughout
Networks trade linking cities in Mesopotamia
Contact of early Cities
Ev: Late Uruk Jemdet Nasr Cylinder Seal
Cylinder seals with temples, priest king feeding herd cattle - possibly an Indus Valley shell
Shell only found in Karachi, thick column 3cm diameter, only species that thick column, seal made from this shell
3300-2900BC
Indicate trade connections linking Mesopotamia and Indus
Kot Dijian Phase
2800-2600BC (Regionalisation Era)
Settlement grow into town
Two sectors
Adjacent
Large Walls
Walls not for defence
Controlled access - trade/materials/politics
City walls requires transport technology
Ev: Ox Carts and Bullock Carts in 2800BC
Ev: Roadways developed
Cart tracks on streets 2800BC
Move timbers, bricks and commodities
3700BC (some cart fragment) and in Girawar there is a cart with wheels
Early evidence of wheel carts developing in Steppes and Indus
Mudbrick Walls
450 people 3 months to build
Walls enclose grid-like settlement
North-south and East-west streets
Used until 2600BC
High Value Items
Complex Craft Technologies
Firing
Faience (frit, ground rock) which is heated in fire and glazed surface
Blue turquoise colour, fake turquoise invented for faience
Furnaces, Kilns and other technologies
Some houses have no evidence of craft
Suggest there are crafters and resource controllers
Silver and Gold
Sequin buttons, silver ornaments, textiles and bangles etc.
Found hoards or lost in streets
Silver traced with lead isotopes
Lots from Baluchistand
Some silver with unknown origins
Anatolian Pleateu and Mesopotamia famous for silver (possibly from there)
Evidence of wealth
Losing silver gold on street and not pick up suggest enough wealth
Suggest control and dominate cities
New materials used
Suggest prospecting and find new competitive resources
Trying to break into market
Competition allows growth and expansion
Extending South
People Controlling Resources and Power
Power demonstrated through writing, seals, weights
Sealings to control goods stored
Elephant motif, geometric seals
Cubic limestone weight to value gold?
Pottery signage
Harappa 1: Post-firing graffiti in Ravi Phase
Harappa 2: Similar signs from graffiti used to develop Indus script
Beginnings of writing symbols - evolution and eventual codification
Writing system began to be used in seals
Harappa Phase
2600-1900BC (Integration Era)
Cities emerging
Rulers
Had names and used writing system which recorded names and genealogies
Cannot translate names
Writing
No bilingual texts to translate this language
Indecipherable
Common Image is like a unicorn
Symbol of communities
Shown in seals and figurines
Only one horn from single figure
No animals bones, clearly a myth
Codifying multiple languages
Proto-Dravidian, Mundari, Indo-Aryan, Sino-Tibetan, Language 'X'
Language 'X' = first language people named animals, trees, plants and sickles (still in Hindi and Urdu) - these cannot be traced to modern language family, believed to be Neolithic language
Display
Written from right to left
Based on pottery writing
Purpose
Economic/Trade
Ev: found on square seals used for trade and ritual
Ev: Faience, steatite or terracotta tokens fo accounting or rituals
Ritual
Personal Identification
Ev: Faience and steatite regulated pottery workshop uses
Rigid control of production of tablets (state or elites)
Prescribed
Track movements across the city
Mechanism
Sealings
Ev: lump of clay with four different seals
Four people stamp clay as corporate ownership
Equal testing of ownership
Large Seals
Too large/awkward to be used
Symbols
Small circular seals
Traders in gulf used
Used in writing seals
Sequence of signs from Indus and gulf is not the same
Same alphabet to write multiple languages
Indus script to write Gulf langauge
Change
Indus script in last phase show change in sequence of writing
New signs coming in on objects dated later
Some signs disappear in later objects
Changing system
New languages came in?
Egyptians heiroglyphs no word for horse, when horses introduced there was a heiroglyph sequence for horse, word for horse was not Egyptian it came elsewhere
Ideology
Writing is connected to ideology
Key to understanding disappearance
Associated with rituals and events
Trees as motifs suggest why there are no large temples
Trees/outside location of rituals
Rituals
Indus Valley did have rituals
Ev: Deities, animals sacrifice and human-tiger interaction on seals
2200-1900BC seals from last phase
Deity grabs tigers by throat standing on elephant and wheel above head (Palaeolithic tradition translated into regional ideas? Independent of Gilgamesh epic)
Man talking to tiger from tree
Sacrifice of water-buffalo using trident as spear and deity in yogic position
Narratives followed in later South Asian iconography - e.g. killing of water buffalo represents deity conquering power of chaos, seen in Tantric iconography
Water buffalo motif spread to Mesopotamia - may be domesticated in Euphrates?
Iconography of seals and Akkadian Cylinder seals suggest motif and animals came from Indus
Water buffalos - good milk
Kept in temples in Mesopotamia and watered for deities
Dholavira Seals
Made of teracotta tablet
Giants holding two people by waist and horned deity on other side
Evidence for human and superhuman conflict
Conflict is always between deities and humans or humans and animals - never between people
Yoga
Yoga developed in Indus as part of religious ideology
May be linked with writing
Link between later ritual significance of Indus and earlier
Development
Many houses have wells and bathrooms
Underground drainage system in the city
Superior conditions to contenporeos
Well planned urbanisation
Structure
Multiple walled areas next to each other with gateways
Outside of the walls is a settlement - caravanserai (stay outside city at night if gates closed)
Cemetery to south and west of settlement
Craft workshops within walled areas - faience and clay
Only two seal workshops - produce seals all over city
Suggest control of production of writing material
Rulers?
No hierarchical rule of cities
No monarchs
Sculpture
Ev: Priest-king sculpture, Mohenjo-daro
Represent on of the elites - lots of power
Painted red and green and gold bead on forehead
(Right: Priest-King Sculpture from Mohenjo-Daro)
Textiles
Elites distinguished by textiles
Ev: textiles made of cotton, wool and silk
Copper and microbeads ornaments threaded with silk
Ev: Robed figures in Dholavira and Mohenjo-Daro
Represent clan leaders or individuals with power
Women
Elaborately decorated females
Ev: figurine with elaborate jewellery similar to Allahdino hoard
Ev: figurine with Harappan headdress from Mari, Mesopotamia, 2400
No other Mesopotamians have this headdress
Mari is filled with Indus beads
Perhaps sealed goods in marriage
Hoards of Allahdino jewellery
Silver necklaces, belts, toe-rings etc.
Last phase of Harappa women may have been ordering slaves around
Women buried in early part of cemetery have wide bangles and they thin with time
Women became more elite and removed from physical labour
Other people must be doing labour
Wide bangles found outside cemetery suggest some women with lower status as carry out heavy labour (trading women?)
"Elites"
People buried in Harappan cemeteries
Equal male-female
Not buried with wealth, normally ornaments and shell bangles
Max gold = 3 beads in Harappan period
Hereditary communities
Skeletal analysis (matri-local burial)
Strontium Isotopes
Genetics
Women buried next to husband and their kin
Warfare?
No evidence of warfare in the Indus
Walls not used for defence
No enslavement or war in Indus iconography
No images of rulers in iconography
No war weapons only hunting (spears and daggers)
No cities of Indus ever burned or destroyed by warfare
Not mechanism for integration
BUT there is an exception
Ev: Kalibangan Cylinder Seal
Viable reason to fight - community conflict over bride
Deity stands behind bride to protect
Indus people had spears and daggers - no swords - more likely for hunting than war weapons
Two men with spears pointed at each other and a woman between them
Cylinder Seals are not produced in the Indus
Image: Kalibangan Cylinder Seal