The Indus Civilization Page 10
An Evaluation of These Disruptions at the End of the Early Harappan
It is difficult to evaluate this kind of archaeological evidence. Fires, after all, can be accidental. Attributing burning to warfare or raiding is also outmoded in archaeological explanation, no matter how prevalent these activities were in the historical accounts of life in the Near East and South Asia. The disruption has also been noted by S. P. Gupta, who thinks of it in terms of natural calamities,68 which might well be true for Kalibangan.69 A disruptive or traumatic event at Balakot at the end of Period I is not suggested by the evidence there. Still, there is unmistakable evidence for burning in the Transitional Stage, the historical junction where the Early Harappan meets the Mature. This is a contrast to earlier times, when there is little evidence for large-scale burning at any of the sites of Stages One or Two. In fact, there is no evidence for large-scale fires in earlier levels at Amri, Gumla, or Nausharo, and no such evidence is found at Kalibangan, Balakot, or other sites in the Greater Indus region.
If fires are only accidental, one would expect a random or haphazard pattern to their occurrence, an occasional “blip” in the archaeological record resulting from the careless handling of flames or hot coals. It is significant that there is so little evidence for this kind of day-to-day tragedy in the lives of the ancient inhabitants of the region. It leads one to think that much evidence for the little fires, the kind that destroy one or two buildings and are the unhappy grist of daily life, is considerably erased by the process of cleaning up the mess and rebuilding. This evidence is probably still there in most cases, but it is a detail of the archaeological record: It does not jump out at the excavator as a significant enough catastrophe to make it into the site report. It follows then that when signs of large-scale burning are noted in an excavation, as at Kot Diji, Gumla, Nausharo, and to some degree Amri, it is likely to have been a large conflagration, the damage from which is so massive that it cannot be diffused by cleanup and rebuilding.
Following this line of reasoning, several points seem to be evident: The fires at these sites were large; this large-scale burning is associated with the Early Harappan-Mature Harappan junction; there is little, if any, evidence for such conflagrations at these or other sites in the region prior to or after the Early Harappan—Mature Harappan junction. These observations point to a pattern in the conflagrations, and, while it is true that fires begin for many reasons, a pattern like this might be telling us that they have a common cause.
Other Suggestions of Disruption
It is commonplace to observe that many Mature Harappan sites were founded on virgin soil. Related to this is the observation that many Early Harappan sites were abandoned and not reoccupied during the Mature Harappan, which might be considered just another form of destruction in the settlement history of the Greater Indus region. Quantifying this for the entire Indus region is possible, but would be misleading without some critical observations. First, Sindh and Cholistan have deep settlement histories and relatively dense occupation, but Saurashtra, for example, was a Domain that was apparently only sparsely settled during Early Harappan times. We know little of the settlement history of the Eastern Domain until the Early Harappan Stage, and even then there are significant chronological problems that remain unresolved. Mughal found a number of camps and purely industrial sites in his survey that are not used in the site counts. They do not have equivalents in Sindh. Table 2.16 presents some site counts from Sindh and Cholistan to illustrate the abandonment of Early Harappan sites and the founding of Mature Harappan settlements.
Table 2.16 Changes in settlement occupation: Sindh and Cholistan
Sindh Cholistan
Total number of sites 106 239
Total Early Harappan sites 52 37
Total Mature Harappan sites 65 136
Early and Mature occupations 22 2
Mature Harappan occupations on virgin soil 43 132
Early Harappan sites abandoned 29 33
These are striking numbers. In Cholistan, 33 of the 37 Kot Diji Phase sites were abandoned. For the Mature Harappan, 132 of the 136 sites were established as new settlements on virgin soil. A similar if less dramatic pattern is evident in Sindh. There seems to be an unmistakable conclusion to be drawn from this: The Mature Harappans liked to find new places to live. This observation presents another important discontinuity between these two stages in the cultural history of the Indus Age, complementing the signs of burning. It strengthens the feeling that the beginning of the Mature Harappan has qualities of renewal, of the people cutting their ties with older Early Harappan settlements and seeking fresh, different places to establish themselves and their new way of life and civilization.
THE EARLY HARAPPAN-MATURE HARAPPAN TRANSITION
The Transitional Stage between the Early Harappan and Mature Harappan was defined at Amri by Jean-Marie Casal.70 Since that time the Transitional Stage has been found in excavations at Ghazi Shah,71 Nausharo,72 Kunal,73 Banawali,74 Dholavira,75 and Harappa,76 although the recent revisions to the Harappa periodization do not specifically delineate this stage.
The Chronology of the Transitional Stage
A study of radiocarbon dates suggests that the Transitional Stage is circa 2600—2500 B.C.77 This fits reasonably well with the two building levels in Period II at Amri. Thus, the Transitional Stage is thought to have been three or four generations long—anything but instantaneous.78
Jim G. Shaffer and Diane Lichtenstein: Another Anthropological View
Shaffer and Lichtenstein’s contribution to understanding the Early Harappan and ethnic diversity in the early Indus region is a key one. In 1989 they proposed that the Mature Harappan is a fusion of their Bagor, Hakra, and Kot Diji ethnic groups in the Ghaggar/Hakra Valley.
Fusion appears to have been very rapid, reinforced no doubt by its own success. The earliest set of Harappan dates are from Kalibangan, in the northern Ghaggar/ Hakra Valley at ca. 2600 B.C.; while dates from Allahdino, Balakot and sites in Saurashtra indicate Harappan settlements were established in the southern Indus Valley by ca. 2400 B.C. Possehl and Rissman suggest a rapid origin of 150 years for the Harappan. We suggest it was even less, or 100 years, ca. 2600—2500 B.C. Within the next 100 years, the Harappan became the largest ethnic group within the Indus Valley. This rapid distribution rate was matched only by Harappan abandonment of large sections in the Indus Valley which was under way by ca. 2000 B.C., a process intensified by later hydrological changes. Whatever the Harappan ethnic group’s organizational complexity, it was a cultural system promoting rapid territorial expansion.79
A number of other scholars have pointed to the rather short period of change that separates the Early Harappan from the Mature Harappan.
Sir Mortimer Wheeler
According to Sir Mortimer Wheeler, the Harappan Civilization was “a society strong in heart, disciplined, numerous and imaginatively led grasped the problem and, we may be sure, simultaneously solved it; else it had perished. Here if anywhere may we fairly discern in human affairs an example of that swift adaptation and progression which biologists know as ‘explosive evolution.’”80
A. Ghosh
Ghosh notes that “at present, the nucleus of the Indus civilization appears to spring into being fully shaped. . . . Like other revolutions, the Indus civilization may in origin best be visualized as the sudden offspring of opportunity and genius.”81 In a discussion of the development of the Harappan Civilization he observed that “all such changes, vast as they are, could easily take place within a generation or two.”82
S. P. Gupta
“The trouble is, as Wheeler has rightly observed, that urban growth of the Indus kind is usually so sudden and quick that within a generation or two, it may spread over a vast area, but the archaeological tool as applied to our protohistoric sites is too blunt to bring out the evidence of this kind.”83
J.-F. Jarrige
In a discussion of his excavations at Nausharo, Jean-François Jarrige observed, “The elements of
continuity between the end of Period I and the beginning of Period II are such that they leave little room for a time gap between them. This suggests that the emergence of the Mature Harappan civilization has been very rapid.”84
M. Jansen
Michael Jansen holds the following view of Mohenjo-daro:
If it was—during its urban phase—a planned platform-based city, then it would indicate an enormous step, not only politically, but also financially and organizationally regarding the effort to construct it. This step would have coincided with the appearance of seals, script, burnt-brick technology, hydrological technology such as circular wells constructed with wedge-shaped bricks, drains and bathing platforms. . . . We are dealing with a rather small time gap of not more than 80 years around 2400 B.C. where all of these elements must have been developed.85
Jansen’s colleague M. Cucarzi notes:
Jansen’s thesis therefore, is that Mohenjo-daro represents the moment in which the urban phase explodes in the Indus civilization and, that in order to build Mohenjo-daro they constructed gigantic clay and/or mud platforms to raise its base level, mainly to protect themselves from the recurrent flooding of the Indus.86
The Look of the Transitional Stage
We do not know very much about the Early Harappan-Mature Harappan Transition. The Mature Harappan has a suite of artifacts and new technologies that are quite different from the Early Harappan. The entire “look” of the Mature Harappan is new, with a new style of pottery, including clay fabrics, vessel forms, and painting. There is some continuity in ceramics, but the differences between Early Harappan and Mature Harappan pottery are clear. There are new metal forms: pots, pans, copper tablets, blades, fishhooks, a razor, and the like. Bronze is introduced on a broad scale. Baked-brick architecture and the town planning that accompanies it are characteristic Mature Harappan features. Brick-lined well technology is also a feature of the Mature Harappan, the one example in earlier contexts probably being in the Early Harappan-Mature Harappan Transition. Bead-making technology is much expanded, along with the widespread use of carnelian, etching, and the complex technology of drilling very long, hard stone beads. Terra-cotta carts and triangular terra-cotta cakes are also unique to the Mature Harappan, although the triangular cakes are also found in the Late Kot Dijian. The distinctive Harappan stamp seal is a feature of the Mature Harappan not present in the Early Harappan.
This list could go on, but what has been presented suffices to make the point: From the perspective of artifacts, the Early Harappan and Mature Harappan are quite different. Since such changes do not take place instantaneously, it would seem that these technologies were developed within the Early Harappan—Mature Harappan Transition. We have some grasp on the Transitional ceramics from Nausharo Ic and Id as well as Amri II (figure 2.20).
Another feature developed within the Early Harappan-Mature Harappan Transition is writing.
The Beginnings of Writing
There is little if any evidence for the beginnings of writing in the Early Harappan. Signs on pots, both pre- and postfiring, begin early, in Stage Two, but this is not writing, and some of it is probably simple potter’s marks or marks of ownership. Logic suggests that the relatively developed writing of the Mature Harappan has its roots in the Early Harappan—Mature Harappan Transition.
Further digging at places like Harappa and Nausharo may well produce evidence for the beginnings of the writing system and a sense of evolution of the script if careful seriation of materials is undertaken. Prototypes of the square Indus stamp seal have been found in the Transitional Stage levels of Kunal.87
Figure 2.20 Ceramics from Nausharo ID showing the Early Indus-Indus Civilization Transition (after Jarrige 1988)
Changes in Social Structure
We do not have anything approaching even an outline of Mature Harappan social structure. A relatively simple “tribal” clan and/or lineage structure for the Early Harappan might be postulated. Several things in the Mature Harappan suggest that the society was quite different from and more complex than the Early Harappan, with more specialization of functional positions and a more developed social hierarchy. The scale of the cities suggests this, but so too does increased evidence of craft specialization, expansion of the economy, and the presence of what may well have been a single ideology synthesizing elements of the four phases of the Early Harappan Stage. There was a new ability to bring people together under a single civilizational rubric; to cause them to work together in new and more productive ways on projects dwarfed by the world of the Early Harappan.
The Foundations of the Indus Ideology
The Mature Harappan represents an ideology new to the Greater Indus region, and probably the world. Some new set of unifying ideas, or a single overarching idea, brought a new sense of unity to the Greater Indus region in the middle of the third millennium B.C. More is said of this later, but one suspects that the Indus ideology was also part of the cultural innovation that characterizes the Early Harappan—Mature Harappan Transition.
Summary
To define the Transitional Stage and outline some of the material objects that have been found there has been one of this chapter’s objectives. I have also suggested some possible sociocultural implications of this phase as a link between the simple regional clans and lineages of the Early Harappan and the greater complexity of the Mature Harappan.
None of this should be elevated to the level of theory. The investigation of the Early Harappan—Mature Harappan Transition has only begun, and we know very little about it. But progress is made in archaeology and other sciences by setting up models, proposing hypotheses, and anticipating data, to speculate on what might be found and then “digging” for it. The archaeological record does not speak for itself and little in it is inherently obvious. None of the important issues such as the explanation of cultural change and the description of a prehistoric society in sociocultural terms will emerge from an approach free from theoretical speculation of this type.
NOTES
1 Braidwood 1975.
2 Zohary and Hopf 1988: 16—52.
3 Vavilov 1949—50.
4 Costantini and Biasini 1985: 16—17; Jarrige 1995: 64.
5 For further discussion, see Possehl 1999b: 407—12.
6 Bar-Yosef and Meadow 1995.
7 Zohary 1970; Zohary and Hopf 1988; Harlan 1971, 1977; Singh 1991; Willcox 1992: 292; Flannery 1995: 5; Lamberg-Karlovsky 1996: 173—74.
8 Vinogradov 1979.
9 Dupree 1972.
10 Possehl 1999b: 432—40.
11 Flam 1999.
12 Jarrige et al. 1995.
13 Meadow 1998: 13.
14 Meadow 1993: 301.
15 Meadow 1984: 35.
16 Meadow 1998: 12.
17 Meadow 1993: 311.
18 Meadow 1993: 307—8.
19 I have adopted the so-called low chronology proposed by J. Reade 2001.
20 See Possehl 1999b: 16—27 for a more detailed coverage of chronology.
21 Mackay 1937–38: xiv-xv.
22 Shaffer and Lichtenstein 1989; Shaffer 1992.
23 Shaffer 1992: vol. II, 426.
24 Fairservis 1956.
25 Dani 1970—71: 39, 41—42.
26 Jarrige et al. 1995: 318; Mackay 1937—38: 591—94.
27 Jarrige et al. 1995: 318.
28 Possehl and Rissman 1992: 469—78.
29 Possehl and Rissman 1992: 473—75.
30 See Possehl 1999b: 470–471 for a complete list of known sites of Stage One.
31 The evaluation of settlement data of the sort presented here is a difficult problem in archaeology. For a discussion, see Possehl 1999b: 562—67.
32 Possehl 1999b: 473—74.
33 Misra 1973.
34 Joshi 1978.
35 Geddes 1983.
36 Samzun and Sellier 1985: 96.
37 Hemphill, Lukacs, and Kennedy 1991: 174.
38 Lechevallier 1984.
39 Mughal 1997.
40 Mughal 1
972.
41 Kenoyer and Meadow 2000; SAA 1997.
42 Mughal 1997: figs 3.4 and pls. I—VI.
43 Mughal 1997: pl. 37 and fig. 9, no. 14.
44 Khan, Knox, and Thomas 1991: 39.
45 Mughal 1997: 40—44.
46 Indian Archaeology, A Review 1961—62: pls. XXXVII and XXXVIII.
47 Indian Archaeology, A Review 1964—65: 13.
48 Fairservis 1975: 317—18.
49 Southworth 1992.
50 Possehl 1999b: 576.
51 Majumdar 1934: 24—33.
52 Casal 1964.
53 R. S. Bisht 1992, personal communication.
54 Possehl 1997a.
55 Majumdar 1934: 65—67.