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Kenoyer, Keys to Lost Indus Cities UNCOVERING THE KEYS TO THE LOST INDUS CITIES 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 JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms Scientific American, a division of Nature America, Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Scientific American 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 Pakistan 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 ; DEPARTMENT OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND MUSEUMS, GOVERNMENT PAKISTAN ( 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 Aurora Photos 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 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 city 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, Harappa, 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 India 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, Egypt and China. 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 HARAPPA ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH PROJECT AND DEPARTMENT OF ARCHAEOLOGY MUSEUMS, GOVERNMENT PAKISTAN 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 ruins of the Indus World state-cultures, along with Mesopo- Aurora Photos; 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 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, Central Asia 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.
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