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How Harappan Is a Harappan Site? How Harappan is a Harappan Site? Mary A. Davis1 1. Faulkner House Drew University, 36 Madison Ave, Madison NJ – 07940, USA (Email: [email protected]; [email protected]) Received: 28 September 2015; Accepted: 19 October 2015; Revised: 07 November 2015 Heritage: Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies in Archaeology 3 (2015): 300‐329 Abstract: The identification of a site as Harappan or Non‐Harappan has been previously based on the presence of a few diagnostic pottery types. The assignment of these designations affects scholarly understandings by obscuring cultural variation, interactions and pluralism, particularly in borderland regions. Here a more nuanced approach is suggested for understanding the many ways “Harappan” might have existed at the site level. Sites may have been differentially integrated into the Harappan sphere politically, economically or ideologically. Archaeological correlates for each of these are evaluated and proposed. Alternative Harappan markers proposed include items such as terracotta cakes and Rohri‐like blades. Keywords: Harappan, Site Identification, Archaeological Culture, Gujarat, Sorath, Classic Harappan, Borderlands Introduction The Indus Civilization is amongst the earliest urbanized societies in the world. It is comprised of thousands of known sites that are of multiple sizes and levels of complexity. These sites share similar material culture and physical organization across a one million square kilometer area (Kenoyer 1989) that straddles the area of modern‐ day Pakistan and Northwest India. The Integration Era or the urban phase of the Indus Tradition is known as the Harappan Phase. It is characterized by widespread and common styles of pottery and other material culture including writing, seals, weights and uniform bricks and is characterized by extensive interregional trade including two areas such as Mesopotamia, and perhaps even greater distances (Vidale 2005). The Harappan Phase is the most well‐studied of all the phases of the greater Indus Tradition. During this phase we have a largely urbanized landscape and the most complex arrangements of social interactions, political decision‐making and trade and interaction, many aspects of which we still strive to understand. The Harappan Phase is one that has been fairly well dated (2600‐1900 BCE) at sites such as Harappa. However the geographic borders of what is encompassed within the Harappan phase, the nature of these borders, and what is and is not truly Harappan can be disputed e.g. (Chase 2010; Fuller 2006; Law 2011; Possehl 1976, 2002a; Kenoyer 2008; Varma 1990). Davis 2015: 300‐329 What is Harappan? There is an archaeological tradition of naming a culture complex after the site in which those types of artifacts were first discovered. In this case the site of Harappa, on the Ravi River in the Pakistani Punjab. The suite of commonly cited materials include “Harappan” Black on Red decorated ceramics in various forms, such as S‐Shaped or Dish‐on –stand and other typically non‐decorated pottery such as perforated jars. Additional hallmarks include baked and raw bricks with a ratio of 1:2:4 (Kenoyer 1998), a shared script, stylistically similar seals, a standardized system of weights (Miller 2013; Kenoyer 2010), Rohri –like chert blade technology, terracotta figurines, terracotta “cakes” and similar ornaments such as steatite and carnelian beads and shell bangles. The material culture of the Indus Civilization is traditionally described as being very homogeneous, even lamentably monotonous (Mackay 1938a). More recently the variation of the different cities, sub regions (Joshi, Bala and Ram 1984), polities (Smith 2004) or domains (Possehl 1998, 1999) is being increasingly investigated and understood diachronically and synchronically (Ameri 2013; Miller 2013; Possehl 1992, 2002a; Shaffer and Lichtenstein 1999; Shinde et al. 2008; Weber 1999; Uesugi 2013). Study of variation has been somewhat hindered due to recent modern political histories and limitations in international communication, scholarly collaboration and interaction with foreign sites and materials for Harappan scholars on both sides of the Indian‐Pakistani border. Many of the worlds’ leading scholars of the Harappan periods never have visited or viewed the bulk of materials from the urban centers of Harappa and Mohenjodaro in the Indus Valley proper. In turn the extremely important findings throughout the Ghaggar‐Hakra region and Gujarat which vary in size from large urban centers such as Rakhigarhi and Dholavira to towns, villages and hamlets are somewhat obscured for Pakistani scholars. Identifying Harappan Sites On practical level most often Harappan sites are identified and classified based on the presence of the diagnostic red on black ceramic sherds. But when we classify a site as Harappan on this basis what are we really identifying? Pots are not people. It is the critical hymn of archaeologist to remind others and themselves that pots do not equate to groups of people, cultures or ethnicities(Kramer 1977). This mantra is at odds with the culture historical approach and system of organizing archaeological materials into “culture areas” (Kroeber 1939). In many modern archaeologies, particularly Anglo‐American, the archaeological culture concept has been considered outdated (Binford 1965; Clarke 1968; Renfrew 1978; Hodder 1978), and are often rooted in nationalist and colonialist ideals (Kohl and Gollán 2002; Kohl and Fawcett 1995; Kane 2003; Meskell 2002; Diaz‐Andreu and Champion 2014; Graves‐Brown, Jones and Gamble 2013). Other terms to replace culture i.e.(horizon, style, tradition, civilization) have been used in its place. These differently named but basically identical sets of features which were originally defined as cultures are still practically used for both regional chronologies and interpretive 301 ISSN 2347 – 5463 Heritage: Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies in Archaeology 3: 2015 lenses but without any further examination or assessment to what these wide spread similarities in time and space really mean (Roberts and Vander Linden 2011) or how they were maintained. Harappan studies are not the only region of the world that falls into the trap of not marrying theory and practice. Worldwide ceramics, or occasionally burial practices, are most often used as the sole means of assigning a site to a culture area or tradition. More specifically, the stylistic aspects of ceramics, focusing on form and decoration, rather technological style (Lemonnier 1986, 1992), technology or function, have been used to recreate past social boundaries (Stark 1998) and identities and ethnicities. The processes of creating patterns of material culture distribution are complex, dynamic and can be due to a number of natural and cultural factors (Binford 1965; Hodder and Orton 1976; Schiffer 1976). Perhaps more importantly material culture style consumption and patterns have been shown not to reflect social boundaries, identities and ethnicities (Cruz 2011; Cordell and Yannie 1991; Shennan 2003). To reveal the complex intra workings and dynamics of social, economic, and political interaction that form a “culture area” we need to examine not only variation in the styles of defining material culture (i.e. ceramics, diagnostic lithics or burials) but a wider range of archaeological material classes from stylistic, technological, and functional perspectives. Harappan Borderlands An important key to understanding the relationship between the style, technology, and function in Harappan material culture and to begin to tease apart the issues of political, economic, and social affiliation and identity within the 3rd millennium in Northwest South Asia lies in the study of areas of the “Harappan Frontier”. Those areas that feature Harappan sites, non‐Harappan sites and those sites that are mixtures of more than one material culture tradition or display “hybridization”. These borderlands or frontiers would have been dynamic areas where social relationships and group interaction took place. The relationships and interaction that occur at a small scale can be reflected in larger material culture and other archaeological patterning, which would change over time to reflect shifts in social, economic and political relationships (Hu 2013). Unlike areas along the Indus River system that are subject to sometimes violent flooding events, the sites in Cholistan, along the Hakra river system and in Gujarat represent many sized contemporary sites preserved in the archaeological record. While some small sites hint at the pastoral aspect within what is sometimes considered the Harappan heartland, such as Allahdino, have been explored we are yet to fully understand these dynamics and nature of interaction with pastoral and rural groups within Sindh and the Punjab. Gujarat is a key area of Harappan studies. This area is particularly important because it represents a cultural mosaic more so than any other area where Harappan material culture is found. The ceramic typologies and 302 Davis 2015: 300‐329 chronologies in Gujarat are notoriously complex, with styles consisting of Pre‐Prabhas, Prabhas, Padri, Anarta Wares, traditional Early Harappan such as KotDiji and Amri‐ Nal Wares, Micaceous Red Ware, Lustrous Red Ware, Sorath Harappan styles, Sindhi/Classic Harappan styles and Black and Red ware appearing in Gujarat during the Indus Tradition. There is some ambiguity between these styles and wares, as well chronological and geographic overlaps and “leapfrogs”. Many sites have these phases that occur in different
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