The Indus Valley: An Introduction

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