UNCOVERING THE KEYS TO THE LOST INDUS Author(s): Jonathan Mark Kenoyer Source: Scientific American, Vol. 289, No. 1 (JULY 2003), pp. 66-75 Published by: Scientific American, a division of Nature America, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/26060364 Accessed: 07-01-2018 01:04 UTC

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This content downloaded from 132.174.254.116 on Sun, 07 Jan 2018 01:04:29 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms This content downloadedCOPYRIGHT from 2003 132.174.254.116 SCIENTIFIC on AMERICAN, Sun, 07 Jan INC. 2018 01:04:29 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Recently excavated artifacts from have inspired a reevaluation of one of the great early urban cultures—the enigmatic Indus Valley civilization above ) and left UNCOVERING THE KEYS TO THE LOST INDUS CITIES By Jonathan Mark Kenoyer

COLORFUL STONE BEADS such as those from Mohenjo Daro (above) were more than mere baubles for the ancient peoples of the Indus River Valley civilization; they served as symbols of wealth, status and power. Skilled artisans developed sophisticated craft technologies to fabricate these and other kinds of ornaments for the elite classes of this early urban society. Archaeologists interpret the strikingly carved soapstone

RANDY OLSON Aurora Photos ; DEPARTMENT OF AND MUSEUMS, GOVERNMENT PAKISTAN ( figure, the so-called priest-king (left), to be a member of the Indus Valley ruling class.

This content downloadedCOPYRIGHT from 2003 132.174.254.116 SCIENTIFIC on AMERICAN, Sun, 07 Jan INC. 2018 01:04:29 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms n the mid-1980s, during our first few seasons excavating the long- dead archaeologists call Harap- pa, my colleagues and I watched the Ipassage of the annual spring fairs without realizing their implications for our stud- ies of the ancient Indus civilization. Every year in Pakistan’s Indus River Valley, people living in villages travel to larger towns to attend festivals called sang, “gathering fairs” where musicians, per- formers and circus troupes entertain the crowds while itinerant merchants and traders hawk their wares. During the sin- gle-day event, women present religious offerings to professional pilgrims, who, on the women’s behalf, will later petition the Sufi saint Sakhi Sarwar for healthy INDUS MERCHANTS stamped glazed seals bearing animal images and the undeciphered Indus writing children, especially sons. At day’s end the symbols into soft clay tags attached to trade goods to indicate ownership and accounting information.

holy sojourners and their colorful secular CREDIT entourage make their way by foot and cent to the traditional fairgrounds. As we and that the activities conducted there donkey cart to the next town along the re- sifted the uppermost soil from the newly some four millennia ago were not unlike gion’s age-old trade routes [see illustra- opened trenches, we recovered modern those occurring even now. Our further tion on page 70]. pottery shards, hundreds of pieces of re- work has confirmed that belief. As today, Eventually various groups of devout cently manufactured glass bangles, some nearby villagers would come to the big wayfarers arriving from different parts of contemporary coins, lead pellets from the city on special market or festival days to the country converge on the saint’s tomb air guns fired at balloons during the fes- participate in ceremonies, to renew fam- hundreds of kilometers away in the tival, fragments of plastic and metal toys, ily or clan ties, or to buy (or barter for) Baluchistan hills. Here they deliver the even a gold earring. Just below the sur- specially crafted items such as ornaments alms and prayers they have collected dur- face levels, however, we began finding and pottery. Along the very same path- ing their treks to the saint’s precinct. ancient Harappan artifacts that were sur- ways trod by present-day pilgrims and Making their way along the same path prisingly similar to the modern flotsam: their followers, raw materials from the the next year, the pilgrims bear salt and broken pottery, terra-cotta bangles, clay hinterlands once arrived at the gates of sacred earth from the distant shrine, to- marbles, toy carts, figurine fragments, , where the artisans in the city’s kens of favor for the fortunate mothers and, occasionally, inscribed tablets and many workshops transformed them into and their precious newborns. weights that were probably used in trade the finished luxury products that were Our view of the sang changed signif- and taxation at the city’s entrance. later purchased by local elite personages icantly when we began digging inside the The buried remains suggested that a and shipped far afield for export markets. southern gateway of Harappa, just adja- thriving market existed in the vicinity Then, as now, people in the Indus Valley wore ornaments and jewelry to demon- strate their wealth and status. To modern Overview/Crafts as Cultural Clues observers, the continuity of day-to-day ■ The ancient Indus Valley civilization, which first arose in what is now Pakistan life in this region from deep in the past to and western after 2600 B.C.E., is the least known of the four major early the present is rather astounding. As ar- urban cultures in the Old World, which included Mesopotamia, and . chaeologists, we can try to determine ■ With no “Rosetta stone” to rely on, linguists have failed to decipher the ancient whether these similarities result from cul- Indus writing, so researchers must study stone beads and other surviving tural choices or from the fact that the evidence to try to understand the social, economic and political structure of available materials and technologies have this once extensive state. not changed much over the millennia. ■ Through careful investigation, scientists have reproduced the techniques The enigmatic Indus Valley civiliza- master craftsmen used to make the many ornamental, commercial and ritual tion was one of the four great early Old artifacts excavators have recovered from the long-buried of the Indus World state-cultures, along with Mesopo- cities. Reading their fine handicrafts for clues, archaeologists are at last tamia, Egypt and China’s Yellow River developing a more detailed portrait of this extinct civilization. civilization. But much less is known

about it because, unlike the other ancient RANDY OLSON Aurora Photos; HARAPPA ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH PROJECT AND DEPARTMENT OF ARCHAEOLOGY MUSEUMS, GOVERNMENT PAKISTAN

68 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN JULY 2003 This content downloadedCOPYRIGHT from 2003 132.174.254.116 SCIENTIFIC on AMERICAN, Sun, 07 Jan INC. 2018 01:04:29 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms urban cultures, linguists have yet to deci- structed large, well-planned cities and rappa (called the Ravi phase) dates from pher the Harappan script we see on re- made exquisite luxury items that were before 3300 B.C.E. to around 2800 B.C.E., covered seals, amulets and pottery vessels. traded and exported to distant markets a time when the Sumerians were building In our ongoing attempt to understand in the Persian Gulf, and their first ziggurats and elaborately deco- how the now vanished people of the In- Mesopotamia. The similarities in site lay- rated temples and the Egyptians were dus culture ordered their society and to out and artifact style throughout the In- burying their rulers and vast hoards of determine the sources of political, eco- dus region reflect a surprisingly uniform wealth in mud-brick tombs. Farming an nomic, military and ideological (religious) economic and social structure. environment similar to the agricultural power in this remarkably extensive and In 1986 the late George F. Dales of the lands of the Fertile Crescent in the Mid- urbanized state, my co-workers and I have University of California at Berkeley es- dle East, the ancient Indus peoples herd- to draw clues from the miscellaneous ma- tablished the Harappa Archaeological ed cattle and cultivated wheat, barley, terial we dig up and from the layout and Research Project, a long-term multidisci- legumes and sesame. Specialized craft architecture of the cities and settlements plinary study effort that I now co-direct technologies spread among the early set- we excavate. with Richard H. Meadow of Harvard tlements along trade networks, which The Harappan writings have not University and Rita Wright of New York likewise disseminated a shared set of reli- been totally useless, however. Although University, in collaboration with Pak- gious symbols and artifact styles through- our inability to translate the symbols that istan’s Federal Department of Archaeol- out the region. artisans and others inscribed on objects ogy and Museums. We conduct on-site Archaeologists have found other has prevented us from learning directly investigations and laboratory research to small farming communities from this pe- how certain individuals and communities study the original Harappan settlement riod to the north and south of Harappa gained and maintained power, we have and to trace the evolution of the larger city along the Ravi River, but none of these gleaned insights from examining the con- that emerged at the site. That work has re- hamlets expanded into a larger town. In text of the writing’s use. These studies, to- vealed several phases of development. the limited exposed area of the Ravi-peri- gether with recent analyses of the ad- The Indus cities established their eco- od Harappa, investigators have turned up vanced crafts that have survived the cen- nomic base on agricultural produce and signs of the production of both terra-cot- turies at Harappa, have begun to yield a livestock, supplemented by fishing and ta and stone beads and bangles. The ter- new understanding of the social power hunting. Both the common people and ra-cotta items were probably worn by structure in the Indus civilization. the elite classes derived additional income children or commoners, or both, whereas from the production and trade of com- the more exotic stone and seashell orna- Hidden Cities modities, including cotton and woolen ments most likely adorned local upper- IN THE 1920S archaeologists exca- textiles as well as a variety of craft items. class populations. Through careful analy- vating old mounds of soil and refuse The earliest village settlement at Ha- sis of the raw materials and comparison that covered the two large Bronze Age cities of Harappa and Mohenjo Daro (“Mound of the Dead” or “Mound of Mohen”) in what are now the Pakistani provinces of Punjab and Sindh brought KABUL the Indus civilization to the world’s at- SHAHR-I-SOKHTA tention. That a major state had flourished AFGHANISTAN on the rich floodplains of the great trans- N A Himalayan river was unexpected. Subse- T LAHORE S quent surveys and excavations in western I K India and Pakistan have uncovered more A HARAPPA than 1,500 additional settlements dis- MOHENJO P DARO GANWERIWALA tributed over an area the size of western

Europe and twice that of Mesopotamia SER T DE N DELHI or ancient Egypt. Although the Indus CHANHU DARO IA D Ganges River BALAKOT IN Valley people did not produce monu- T INDIA KARACHI A E mental stone carvings and did not bury R G their dead with their wealth, they con- Indus River INDUS VALLEY CIVILIZATION, which arose some (current path) ANCIENT CITIES AND SITES 4,800 years ago, eventually included more than Ghaggar-Hakra or 1,500 cities and settlements spread over an Saraswati River MODERN CITIES area the size of western in present-day (ancient dry riverbed)

EDWARD BELL Pakistan and western India.

www.sciam.com SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN 69 This content downloadedCOPYRIGHT from 2003 132.174.254.116 SCIENTIFIC on AMERICAN, Sun, 07 Jan INC. 2018 01:04:29 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms to known source regions, archaeologists to be woven fabrics, a sign of growing for tax or tribute, was established in have shown that some of the raw materi- textile production and the importance of Harappa two centuries before it became als used by the early Ravi craftsmen ar- clothing, not only for functionality but for widespread throughout the Indus Valley. rived at the site from 300 to 800 kilome- public display. Many religious symbols of horned ters away. Impressions of woven fabric A formal writing system, known as human forms and ritual designs on pot- on small terra-cotta beads provide evi- the Early Indus script, emerged in this tery began to appear at Harappa and in dence of textile production, possibly of phase, as evinced by its appearance on nu- far-flung corners of the Indus region dur- both cotton and wool. merous pottery fragments and in impres- ing the Ravi and Kot Dijian periods, in- This early site also contains the first sions that a seal, or stamp, made in clay. dicating the spread and synthesis of reli- indication of abstract symbols, or pic- Merchants employed seals to indicate gious and cultural ideas. Whereas in an- tographs, scratched onto pottery. Cur- ownership of storerooms or bundles of cient Egypt and Mesopotamia military rent studies suggest that some of these goods by stamping clay tags, or bullae, conquest achieved the integration of dis- symbols were retained in the later for- over a cord or a secured door. These tinct regions into single states, this pat- malized Indus script, much as ancient square seals, carved in intaglio with geo- tern has not been seen in early Indus set- Mesopotamian and Egyptian symbols on metric or animal motifs, served as eco- tlements. The first settlers at Harappa pottery and clay tablets from around nomic documentation. Because only a seem to have exploited the rich agricul- The Indus people constructed extensive, well-planned cities and made exquisite luxury items that were exported to distant markets.

3500 B.C.E. and 3200 B.C.E., respectively, few seals have been discovered, it is like- tural and grazing lands along the Ravi later found their way into cuneiform and ly that they were used by individuals or River to sustain themselves as they built hieroglyphic writing. communities with considerable power, economic and political power through Between 2800 and 2600 B.C.E., Ha- such as landowners, merchants and reli- craft production and trade and then le- rappa became a thriving economic center. gious leaders. gitimized their standing through religious Physically, it expanded into a substantial Excavations have turned up other practices rather than warfare. town containing two walled sectors cov- signs of economic evolution during the ering an area of more than 25 hectares— Kot Dijian period. In particular, scientists The City Blossoms about the size of several large shopping unearthed a tiny cubical limestone weight. THE FULLY URBAN PHASE of Harap- malls. In the meantime, many related vil- The stone cube weighs 1.13 grams, which pa (termed the Harappa phase) began lages grew up in scattered sites nearby. corresponds directly with the standard- around 2600 B.C.E. and continued until During this period, called the Kot Dijian ized weight system of the later Indus around 1900 B.C.E. For seven centuries (after the site of Kot Diji to the south), ar- cities. Its recovery indicates that a system Harappa was one of the largest and most tisans developed new craft technologies of determining value by weight, possibly powerful economic and political centers for making widely distributed products such as gray fired bangles and faience (a form of glazed pottery), the fabrication of which usually involved the use of high- temperature kilns [see box on page 74]. At the same time, increasing quanti- ties of stone and other raw materials were being transported to Harappa, probably by oxcarts and flat-bottomed river boats. Toy bullock carts and wheels made of terra-cotta have been found at Harappa from this period, and the later use of carts and boats is well documented. Archaeol- ogists have also recovered figurines of cat- tle and humans painted with what appear

EXULTANT RELIGIOUS PILGRIMS make their way along the age-old Indus Valley trade routes one town a day, bringing prayers and offerings of the

faithful to a distant holy site. RANDY OLSON Aurora Photos CREDIT

70 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN JULY 2003 This content downloadedCOPYRIGHT from 2003 132.174.254.116 SCIENTIFIC on AMERICAN, Sun, 07 Jan INC. 2018 01:04:29 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms BIT BY BIT, Pakistani excavators uncover the massive walls of the of Harappa as archaeologist J. Mark Kenoyer (far right, in group) explains the site’s significance to visitors.

in the Indus Valley, despite the seeming lack of an army. During the spring and late-summer trading seasons, the city would have hosted hundreds of traders who attracted thousands of people from the surrounding rural areas. Depending on the time of year, 40,000 to 80,000 peo- ple may have lived in the city. Wealthy pa- trons and entrepreneurial competition stimulated the development of new tech- Masons employed kiln-fired brick to script was developed, but it was proba- nologies and more extensive trade net- build multistory houses that were placed bly used for writing more than one lan- works. Excavators have found distinctive along north-south and east-west street guage, as was the case in Mesopotamia. pottery with widely used ritual motifs at grids. Major avenues spanned more than We will never know for sure until some- all settlements throughout the greater In- eight meters, and some featured central one discovers some form of bilingual dus Valley, along with unique objects such dividers that may have regulated two- tablet (an Indus Rosetta stone) that will as cubical stone weights, and seals in- way bullock-cart traffic. help scholars break the code of the writ- scribed with Indus writing and a motif de- Builders dug drinking-water wells in ing system. picting a mythical unicorn. and around the city, and Harappan hous- This script became widespread in all Although most traders operated with- es were equipped with bathing areas, la- the major urban centers of the Indus Val- in the Indus Valley region, some materi- trines and sewage drains. Linked to larg- ley. Its most prominent use was on seals als were available only from more distant er mains, which eventually emptied out- that also bore animal motifs and ritual locales. The presence of raw materials side the city walls, the sewers at Harappa objects. The unicorn image [see illustra- and finished goods from Afghanistan and would have removed wastewater from tion on page 68] is the most common Central Asia indicates that merchants the habitation areas, depositing fertile (found on more than 65 percent of from these areas came to the city bringing sludge on the surrounding agricultural known seals), but other animals appear lapis lazuli, tin, gold, silver and, perhaps, fields. Save for the Indus cities, no other as well, including elephants, humped fine woolen textiles (which have since city in the ancient world featured such a zebu bulls, water buffaloes, bison, tigers vanished). Traders would have carried sophisticated water and waste manage- and rhinoceroses. The animal symbols back to the highlands cereal grains and ment system. Even during the Roman may have represented important clans or livestock, as well as fine cottons and pos- Empire, some 2,000 years later, these official social classes; the writing proba- sibly even silks, but these items are not kinds of facilities were limited to upper- bly listed the name of the owner and well preserved. Other nonperishable ob- class neighborhoods. statements of legal legitimacy. The regu- jects, such as long, elegant beads made of During this period, scribes developed lar appearance of the unicorn sign indi- carnelian (a form of red agate) and shell a sophisticated writing system compris- cates a widespread and powerful com- bangles from the Indus Valley, have been ing more than 400 symbols that the so- munity, possibly merchants. dug up in Central Asia and Mesopotamia. ciety’s elite classes—including traders, Beyond seals inscribed with writing In its prime, Harappa measured more landowners and ritual specialists—used and animal signs, excavators have found than 150 hectares in area—more than five as a mechanism for economic control large pottery vessels for holding mer- kilometers in circuit, encompassing three and political power. Archaeologists do chandise for trade etched with what may large raised mounds and associated sub- not know the language for which the have been names of owners or con- urbs. The modern town of Harappa, with a population of around 20,000, still JONATHAN MARK KENOYER is professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin–Madi- occupies a third of the ancient site. The son, where he teaches archaeology, ethnoarchaeology, experimental archaeology and an- city’s architecture and street layout were cient technology. His main focus is the Indus Valley civilization of Pakistan and India, where organized to facilitate access to the dif- he has conducted research for the past 27 years. Kenoyer received his advanced degrees ferent neighborhoods and to segregate from the University of California, Berkeley. Since 1986 he has served as co-director and field

the public and private areas. Massive THE AUTHOR director of the Harappa Archaeological Research Project, which is funded by the National En- mud-brick walls enclosed each of the dowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, the National Geographic So- raised mounds [see illustration above], ciety, the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology of Harvard University, the Amer- and narrow gates limited access, permit- ican School of Prehistoric Research, the University of Wisconsin, the Smithsonian Institu-

RANDY OLSON Aurora Photos CREDIT ting only a single oxcart to pass at a time. tion, the Kress Foundation, as well as private donors.

www.sciam.com SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN 71 This content downloadedCOPYRIGHT from 2003 132.174.254.116 SCIENTIFIC on AMERICAN, Sun, 07 Jan INC. 2018 01:04:29 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms signees, together with a description of the contents. Investigators have interpreted examples of script scratched on bronze tools and gold jewelry as personal names or values. We also see for the first time small to- kens or tablets made of steatite (soap- stone) incised with script and symbols. Because many of these items feature the same set of signs and what appear to be numbers, researchers think that they served as tools for accounting. The writ- ing may indicate the owner’s name, the commodity and its quantity or the credi- tor to whom it is being presented. Simi- lar tablets made of clay or faience that were stamped with a seal are found quite commonly in the later levels of the site. Some of these tablets have been inten- tionally snapped in two, possibly to indi- cate a contract between two parties, each of whom retained half until the transac- TELLTALE TOOL MARKS become visible when the author examines ancient Indus Valley artifacts with a scanning electron microscope at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. tion or work was completed. Distinctive copper tablets with script and animal mo- peting processes—the desire to differen- gamesh epic, in which the hero strangles tifs and their widespread use in Mohenjo tiate among communities and classes a pair of lions. The similarities between Daro and Harappa are perhaps the earli- within the cities and attempts to integrate these motifs are evidence of shared con- est evidence for a form of city coinage in these separate groups by promoting a cepts of power and dominance, but we the Indus Valley. common ideology. do not know if the specific narrative Our discovery in 2001 of a workshop In this period, we see writing com- spread from one region to the other. that manufactured seals and inscribed bined with narrative mythological scenes As Harappa began to host more peo- tablets at Harappa [see box on page 74], that indicate its use related to religious ple from foreign lands, the elite classes combined with the past 16 years of ex- themes. Spiritual leaders most likely used probably felt the need to help legitimize cavation at the site, has provided a new seals and tablets to communicate the their rule through public rituals and cer- chronology for the development of the names of deities and rituals to the com- emonies that reinforced the principal re- Indus writing. In the past, scholars had mon people. Although researchers do not ligious traditions. In Mesopotamia and lumped all the seals and tablets together, know the names of the Indus deities, we ancient Egypt, political and religious but now we can demonstrate that differ- see the repeated motif of a seated male leaders accomplished this task by con- Scribes developed a writing system that the society’s elite used as a mechanism for economic control and political power. ent types of seals and tablets emerged at figure in a yogic position, wearing a structing massive stone or brick murals various times and that the writing itself horned headdress. In one set of narra- covered with religious and political pro- may have changed over the years. We are tives, a buffalo is sacrificed in front of the paganda depicting rulers conquering currently trying to reach conclusions seated deity; in others, he is surrounded their enemies, but no similar artifacts about the dating of the script changes by ferocious wild animals. Female deities have been unearthed in the Indus Valley. and expect that this chronology will rev- are also depicted on seals, sometimes olutionize the attempts at decipherment. with a horned headdress and fighting a The Indus Culture Changes Between 2300 and 1900 B.C.E. the - tiger. A theme on many seals and im- PREVIOUSLY SCHOLARS argued that ban populations in the Indus Valley ex- pressions on clay tablets is that of a de- the Indus cities were suddenly aban- panded, and ornaments, tools and man- ity strangling two tigers, in some in- doned around 1750 B.C.E., but our recent ufacturing technologies grew increasing- stances depicted standing on top of an work at Harappa has clearly demon- ly diverse. Archaeologists believe that elephant. A similar scene found in strated that during its late phase, from

these stylistic changes reflect two com- Mesopotamia is associated with the Gil- 1900 to 1300 B.C.E., Harappa was indeed DAVID NEVALA

72 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN JULY 2003 This content downloadedCOPYRIGHT from 2003 132.174.254.116 SCIENTIFIC on AMERICAN, Sun, 07 Jan INC. 2018 01:04:29 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms DAVID NEVALA; HARAPPA ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH PROJECT AND DEPARTMENT OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND MUSEUMS, GOVERNMENT OF PAKISTAN www.sciam.com B.C.E. OUR EXCAVATIONS What the Beads (1900 to1300 Ravi phasethroughtheLateHarappan all partsofHarappa,datingfromthe than anyothertype,andtheyoccurin have recoveredmoresteatitebeads known assoapstone.Archaeologists fabricated fromsteatite,asofttalcalso a millimeteracross). tiny holes(onehalftothreequartersof because, forstringing,theyneeded particularly difficulttofashion to twomillimeterslong.Thesewere three millimetersindiameterandone were quitesmall,between1.5and stone beads,byfarthemostprevalenttypesduringthatperiod methods, wasstrongevenintheearlyRaviphase(3300to2800 more valuableandattractiveornaments. market demand,andencouragementbywealthypatronstocreate was probablystimulatedbycompetitionbetweenworkshops, techniques evolvedover1,400years.Thiscontinualelaboration we havebeenabletodocumenthowbeadstylesanddrilling to-make beadsassymbolsofwealth,statusandpower. sponsored bytheeliteurbanclassesandproducedrare,difficult- Some ofthebead-makingareasthatweuncoveredwereprobably multiple strandsofbeadsmadefromcoloredandpatternedstones. copious quantitiesofjewelry,revealsthatHarappansoftenwore evidence, particularlysmallfigurinesofcitydwellersadornedwith produced themfromtheearliestsettlementonward.Other major occupationphasesofthesite,indicatingthatinhabitants Harappa andother Induscitiesalsoworkedharder stones,suchas fabricate faienceornaments,seals andtablets. foundation forlatervitreousglazing proceduresemployedto practiced thiskindofprocessing, whichmayhaveservedasthe enstatite andalumina.Manycraftsmen oftheIndusregion and transformintomuchharder minerals, includingcristobalite, Celsius (1,562degreesFahrenheit),steatitecrystalsgiveoffwater green glazewhenheated.Whenfiredatmorethan850degrees of quartzpowder)mixedwithcopperoxide,whichyieldedablue- artisans coatedwithafinelygroundsilicafrit(aglassypastemade converting themineralintoaharder,moredurableform. Finally, theworkersfiredbeadsinkilns,turningthemwhiteand and polishedthemongrindstones. ground theunfinishedbeadstosize millimeter indiameter.Thenthey hardened acaciathornsabouthalfa steatite usingcopperdrillsoreven bored holesinroughlyformedbeadsof Some oftheearliestbeadswere The desireforhigh-qualitybeads,andthusrefinedfabrication From theunfinishedsamplesandremainsofworkshops, From theRavithrough thefullyurbanphase,bead makersin Some beadsofsteatitewereleftwitharoughsurface,which ) ofHarappa.Althoughitisrelativelysimpletomakelarge B.C.E. at Harappahaveyieldedstonebeadsfromallthe ). Artisanseasily This content downloadedfrom 132.174.254.116 onSun,07Jan 201801:04:29UTC MASTER ARTISANS often importedfromfarafield,intoexquisitebeadwork. drilling anddecoratingmethodstofashioncoloredminerals, COPYRIGHT 2003 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC. All use subject tohttp://about.jstor.org/terms Say of theIndususedcomplexgrinding, stone beadsbyworking halfwaythroughfromeach side. as Ernestitedrills, thecopperdrillscouldperforate relativelyhard tubular drillsonlyamillimeterin diameter.Thoughnotasefficient vessels, butthentheyminiaturized thetechnique,workingwithtiny this methodforhollowingoutlarge stoneringsandalabaster combination withabrasives.The Harappanshadalwaysemployed perforating stonewithhollowtubular copperdrillsusedin disruptions intradenetworksthatoccurredattime. disappeared inthenorthernsites,perhapsbecauseof analysis suggeststhatitisafine-grainedmetamorphicrock Ernestite seemstocontainvariousminerals,andpreliminary yet discoveredtheirprecisecompositionorsourcearea. mystery, anddespitenumerousstudiessurveys,wehavenot Daro, Pakistan.Thesehighlyeffectivedrillsremainsomethingof archaeologist ErnestJ.H.Mackay,whofirstdiscovereditinChanhu stone drill,whichwehavecalledErnestite,inhonorofEnglish centuries, butaround1900 that wereheldinplacewithpolishedbronzespacers. often worethelongcarnelianbeadsasabeltofmultiplestrands mately thesamehardness. tedious, asboththestonedrillsandbeadswereofapproxi- a continuouspassagewayforthestring.Thisprocesswas drills penetratedthebeadshalfwaythroughfromeachsidetoform Hafted ontoathinwoodendowelandturnedwithbow,these by shapingtinysliversofstoneintolong,taperedcylinders. that workersperforatedsomebeadswithhardstonedrillsmade underst well not is it pecking technique, so variety ofstonedrill.Indusscholarshavenotreplicatedthe withpecking a st agate andjasper,whichrequiredotherdrillingtechniques: But thedrillingofbeadsdidnotstop.Laterartisansbegan Harappan beadmakersusedErnestitedrillsforseven Around 2600 one orcoppertoolfollowedbyboringwithaharder B.C.E. , Induscraftsmendiscoveredamuchtougher B.C.E. making otherrockseasiertochip. craftsmen forhardeningsteatiteand widely practicedbyHarappan the originalrock,aprocessthatwas the by-productofintentionalheating occurrence inthedrillshintsthatitis temperature ceramicmaterials.Its but isproducedinmodernhigh- Mullite israrelyfoundinnaturalform mullite, hematiteandtitaniumoxide. composed mostlyofquartz,sillimanite, to makeexquisitecarnelianbeadsthat region. Theygavethecraftsmenaway implies thattheywereuniqueto at sitesintheIndusValley,which tured, sofartheyhavebeenfoundonly first Ernestitedrillsweremanufac- Mesopotamia, includingUr.People traded topeoplesinCentralAsiaand were wornbytheInduselitesand Although wedonotknowwherethe this drillingtechnique SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN ood. Butitisknown — J.M.K. 73 Secrets of Harappan Glazing Techniques

FAIENCE, AN ATTRACTIVE glazed ceramic or stone featuring a pottery containers made of sand and straw-tempered clay that lustrous sheen, is one of the complex craft techniques used by would not melt down at the high temperatures needed for glazing. artisans to create high-status goods for elite consumers To keep the glazed tablets and other objects from sticking to the throughout Harappan history. Indus Valley faience was stronger pottery firing container, the inside surface was thickly coated with than that from Egypt or Mesopotamia because it was made with a coarse white powder consisting of burned bone and sometimes partially melted quartz that was reground into a fine paste before ground-up steatite. a second firing, which fused the glassy powder to the core of the No kiln was discovered in the small workshop area, even though object. The Indus artisans needed a stronger form of faience we recovered large quantities of charcoal, frothy vitreous yellow- because they were making different types of objects than those green faience slag and broken firing canisters. After carefully used in other regions, specifically faience bangles. They also examining the containers and vitrified supports used to stabilize produced tiny glazed beads and delicately molded tablets them during firing, I began to suspect that the artisans had relied inscribed with written symbols used as credit tokens to keep on a novel firing method. With the assistance of my graduate accounts of goods coming into or moving out of the cities. students, I was able to successfully test this procedure through an The Harappan elite classes employed faience not only for experimental reconstruction undertaken at the University of decoration and commerce but for ritual purposes as well. Tablets Wisconsin–Madison during the summer of 2001. bearing narrative scenes may have been manufactured for special It looks as if the Harappan faience glazers assembled two firing ceremonies and handed out to participants who had offered containers to form a mini kiln, rather than using bigger, more donations or sacrifices. Control of faience production techniques conventional firing structures. If heated in an open bonfire, they and the fabrication facilities was essential for Harappan elite could reach temperatures high enough to glaze small objects. In classes to create and maintain their the experiment, I replicated faience symbols of status and power. paste as well as the canisters and Although workers produced faience molds with materials and tools similar from easily obtained materials, the to those used by the ancient technical expertise needed to process Harappans. We placed the molded them into finished goods was highly prefired faience tablets and other test specialized. Artisans partially melted objects, including the steatite molds, powdered rock quartz in high- in the container and covered it with a temperature kilns, using flux additives lid. Then we inserted conical supports (fusion aids) made of plant ash to to hold the lid up and to leave a small create a glassy frit. They then reground gap to allow flames to enter the the frit, which they refired at around miniature firing chamber. I positioned 940 degrees Celsius (1,724 degrees the canister on a low pile of firewood, Fahrenheit) to create dense, glazed covered it with more wood and lit the faience. When copper oxide or azurite fire, adding more fuel to keep the was added to the frit, the resulting assembly red-hot. goods resembled turquoise or lapis PRODUCTION of glazed stone and ceramics, known as After about three hours of firing, lazuli but were much less likely to faience, required Indus craftsmen to develop sophisticated the faience objects, just barely visible discolor when worn against the skin in coating and firing techniques. Copper oxide–bearing in the crack between the lid and the minerals (center) were added to color the silica glaze blue a hot and humid climate. so that it resembled precious turquoise or lapis lazuli. lower canister, began to glow a deep Archaeologists have found red-orange and to emit a distinctive manufacturing debris from faience production throughout the odor. Using a thermocouple with a digital pyrometer, we were able habitation layers in various parts of Harappa, but for 70 years they to document the firing temperature at around 935 degrees C, the had failed to locate faience kilns. Our discovery in 2001 of a small critical glazing point for Harappan faience. We maintained this faience workshop revealed that researchers had been looking for temperature for about an hour by adding more wood. the wrong type of kiln. This find was akin to discovering the After the mini kiln had cooled down, my students and I gathered Harappan mint, because the workshop was also used for making around to observe the results. Though not identical to faience objects steatite (soapstone) tablets, as well as beads and other created by Harappan master craftsmen, fully glazed faience tablets ornamental objects—all objects of wealth. and beads resulted. This first attempt of ours indicates that the Painstaking excavation and mapping of hundreds of artifacts canister-kiln technique would have been a highly efficient method from the workshop allowed us to reconstruct some of the processes for producing faience and fired steatite objects. Even more used to fabricate beads, bangles and tablets. To produce molded important was that the remains of the process—a pile of charcoal faience tablets, craftsmen first sawed raw lumps of steatite into and ash, a cracked firing container, some discarded conical supports, thin slabs and then carved them in reverse images to make molds. charred bone, and a few rejected beads and tablets—closely

They used these molds to form tiny tablets that were placed in resembled what we had found in the workshop at Harappa. —J.M.K. DAVID NEVALA; HARAPPA ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH PROJECT AND DEPARTMENT OF ARCHAEOLOGY MUSEUMS, GOVERNMENT PAKISTAN

74 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN JULY 2003 This content downloadedCOPYRIGHT from 2003 132.174.254.116 SCIENTIFIC on AMERICAN, Sun, 07 Jan INC. 2018 01:04:29 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms STANDARDIZED STONE WEIGHTS were employed by Harappan traders to measure out high-value merchandise for sale in urban markets.

inhabited. In fact, signs that drains and city walls were not maintained provide proof of crowding and a breakdown of civic order. The remains suggest that the ruling elites were no longer able to con- trol the day-to-day functioning of the ur- ban center. This loss of authority must controlling the movement of peoples as terials and social needs. Around 1700 have eventually led to a reorganization of they spread out into new regions. B.C.E. came the first evidence for glass society, not just in Harappa but through- The speed of change varied in differ- beads produced at Harappa, some 200 out the entire region that the upper class- ent areas, but by 1300 to 1000 B.C.E. a years before glass was being made in es had dominated for 700 years. Similar new social order characterized by a dis- Egypt. During the subsequent Painted changes were occurring at the other big tinctive ideology and language began to Gray Ware culture (1200 to 800 B.C.E.), cities, such as Mohenjo Daro to the south emerge in the northern Indus Valley and glass bottles and bangles as well as beads and Dholavira in western India. the Ganges River region to the east. Ac- were being fabricated at sites throughout The crisis led to a cessation of the cording to ancient Indian literary records northern India and Pakistan. It was then,

CREDIT hallmarks of Indus elite culture. The dis- such as the Vedas and the too, that iron production—a new tech- tinctive pottery with ritual motifs and In- and Ramayana epics, this area was pop- nology that spread throughout the north- dus script and traditional square seals ulated by numerous competing polities ern Indus Valley and the Ganges River re- with unicorn and other animal motifs practicing Vedic religion and speaking gion—emerged. Although the peoples of disappeared. Cubical weights for taxa- Indo-Aryan languages such as Sanskrit and West Asia smelted iron dur- tion and trade fell into disuse, and the in- and its various dialects. Our information ing this period, the iron manufacture of ternational trade networks began to de- is hampered by the fact that most of the ancient India and Pakistan was a sepa- teriorate. Shells from the coastal regions Indus settlements dating to this period rate development unrelated to activities no longer made their way to the northern have either been destroyed by later ero- in the west. sites, and lapis lazuli from the north sion or brick robbing or are covered by Much of the Indus culture has yet to failed to reach the sites in the plains. In continuous inhabitation, which makes be investigated, but the results of recent Mesopotamia the texts that had record- excavation impossible. Both Harappa work at sites such as Harappa are finally ed ongoing trade with a region called and Mohenjo Daro supported later set- lifting the veil from an important civi- Meluhha, which is probably the Indus tlements dating to this time, but these lev- lization that has long been shrouded in Valley, no longer mentioned it. els have been badly disturbed. mystery. There seems to have been no single Even though many features of elite cause of the decline and reorganization of Indus culture faded away, some aspects Ancient Indus Valley artifacts are the Indus civilization but rather an array of its urbanism and the important craft on exhibit in “Art of the First Cities: of factors. The growth of trade and the technologies survived. Pottery, faience, The Third Millennium B.C. from the expansion of Indus settlements onto the and copper and bronze continued to be Mediterranean to the Indus” at the Ganges River plain as well as into what is produced in the Indus region, although Metropolitan Museum of Art in New now the state of in western India they were adapted to changing raw ma- York City through August 17, 2003. led to the overextension of the Indus po- litical and economic system. Around MORE TO EXPLORE 1900 B.C.E., one of the major rivers of the Deciphering the Indus Script. Asko Parpola. Cambridge University Press, 1994. Indus Valley, the Ghaggar-Hakra (also Excavations at Harappa 1994–1995: New Perspectives on the Indus Script, Craft Activities, and called the Saraswati), began to shift its City Organization. Richard H. Meadow and Jonathan Mark Kenoyer in South Asian Archaeology course and eventually dried up, leaving 1995. Edited by Bridget Allchin and F. Raymond Allchin. Oxford & IBH, New Delhi, 1997. many sites without a viable subsistence Origins of a Civilization: The Prehistory and Early Archaeology of South Asia. F. Raymond Allchin and Bridget Allchin. Viking Penguin, Delhi, 1997. base. These communities would have mi- Trade and Technology of the Indus Valley: New Insights from Harappa, Pakistan. Jonathan Mark grated to other farming regions or to cities Kenoyer in World Archaeology, Vol. 29, No. 2, pages 262–280; October 1, 1997. such as Mohenjo Daro and Harappa, re- Ancient Cities of the Indus Valley Civilization. Jonathan Mark Kenoyer. Oxford University Press, sulting in overcrowding and civic disor- Karachi, 1998. der. Without a tradition of army-enforced The Indus Valley Mystery. Richard H. Meadow and Jonathan Mark Kenoyer in Discovering social integration, leaders had no mecha- Archaeology, Vol. 2, No. 2, pages 38–43; April 2000.

RANDY OLSON Aurora Photos; HARAPPA ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH PROJECT AND DEPARTMENT OF ARCHAEOLOGY MUSEUMS, GOVERNMENT PAKISTAN nism for maintaining trade networks and For more information on Harappa, visit www.harappa.com

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