The Indus Civilization Read online

  Ceramics

  The early pottery from Mehrgarh is hand formed, pieced together, and lightly decorated.6 There is also a basket-marked ware in early Mehrgarh that was made by packing a lining of clay inside a basket and then firing the entire unit. One would think that old, expended baskets were used for this purpose, but the basket itself would have provided some of the fuel for the burning.

  It appears that some sort of slow potter’s wheel was present in Period II at Mehrgarh, right at the beginning of pottery making. Other pots were made on a wheel and expanded by paddle and anvil. Wheel technology is vastly expanded in Period III, with beautiful, fine red wares. The precise kind of potter’s wheel present so early is not certain, but a hand-turned table would be a good guess.

  There is evidence during the Indus Age of the forming of pots using a slab technology, coiling, slow and fast wheels, as well as paddle and anvil. Some individual pots were made using more than one of these techniques.

  During the Early and Mature Harappan, some pots have unmistakable signs that they were formed on a wheel. There is the corkscrew pattern on vessel walls that results from the potter’s steady, slow, upward pull of clay, indicating a spinning pot and stationary hand. String marks on the bases of pots, made when the formed vessel was cut from the hump of clay on the wheel, are also good indicators. Mass-produced pottery, with striations exactly parallel to one another and the ground, with deep grooves also parallel to the ground can be taken as wheel made.

  Some of the Mature Harappan pots are quite large: a meter or so tall and about that diameter. Mackay noted that these pots were made in sections he called “coiled strips of clay.”7 R. Wright tells us that they were made in three separate parts: the base, the body, and the rim.8 The base was made in a chuck. This is an implement that serves two purposes: It holds and supports the base and the other parts as the pot is being assembled; the chuck also assists in forming the base.

  The midsection of the pot was fashioned separately, possibly also using a chuck. After it had been formed the body of the pot was picked up and carried to the base, where it was placed. The potter then melded the two parts together. Doing this in an effective way, giving sufficient strength to the vessel so that it would not immediately (or ever!) break along this natural fault line is not easy. Since the midsection of these large pots was heavy and not strong, the Indus potters habitually tied string around the midsection to support the clay after it had been shaped. The pressure of the soft clay against the string left an imprint on the outer surface, which remained with the pot when the string burned away during firing.

  The rim portion of the pot was then made and wedded to the base and midsection; it too was melded into place. The assembled vessel was cleaned up and the external signs of the tripartite manufacturing process removed as best as could be done (generally very well). The pot was then slipped and decorated (figure 4.1).

  Some Mature Harappan pots were formed in a preliminary way, then expanded by paddle and anvil. This is especially true of the handi-shaped cooking vessels.9 Some pots were pared, shaved, scraped, and whatnot. These operations thinned and further shaped the pot and are documented to have occurred during the Indus Age almost from the beginning.

  Clay Coverings, Slips, Glazes, Paints, and Decoration

  The next stage in producing a pot is concerned with additions to the pot, generally on the outside, that play a role in determining the color, texture, and porosity of the vessel, as well as protection against thermal shock.

  Early use of these clay coatings occurs with the Wet Wares of the Quetta area. These go back to Kechi Beg times, but flower in the Damb Sadaat and Quetta Stages. The Wet Wares were made by applying a viscous slurry of very fine clay over the body of a formed pot. The resulting pattern is both decorative and functional since the many ridges increase the surface area of the pot. Wet Ware vessels are globular, and the larger surface area enhanced evaporation; thus, they were probably conceived as water pots, although used for many purposes (figure 4.2).

  It was common practice during the Indus Age, from Togau times on, to slip most if not all of the outside of pots with a thin clay coating that helped maintain surface color and texture as well as assisted in controlling the porosity of the vessel. Much of the slipped pottery of the Indus Age is red, but buff slips are also fairly common. There are also colors in between these extremes that seem to result from the imperfect control the ancient potter had over kiln temperature, oxygen, and the selection of raw materials.

  Figure 4.1 A large Indus pot made in three parts

  Figure 4.2 Wet Ware water pot (after Fairservis 1956)

  The most common form of decoration for pots of the Indus Age was painting, and black was usually the color. Other colors that occur are red, orange, white, blue, and yellow. The paints were generally applied by brush or some brushlike implement. The paints of the Indus Age were generally minerals, iron and manganese oxides being very common, although lamp black was also used (figure 4.3).10

  The chemistry of paints used on prehistoric pottery is a specialized field. The subject must have been quite intriguing to the prehistoric potter, since there is not necessarily a close relationship between the color before firing and the one the comes out afterward. For example, some iron minerals such as yellow ocher completely change in firing by losing their water, becoming a ferric oxide, and turning red. But raw clay, free of iron and organic impurities, probably looks white at the beginning and fires to that color.

  There are no fully developed glazes of the Indus Age. One ceramic generally called Reserved Slipped Ware does have a kind of crypto-glaze. There is a short article on this ceramic, covering the basics of this ceramic and concluding quite rightly that it is not evidence for Indus-Mesopotamian contact.11

  Glass, Faience, and Frit

  There is no true glass from the Indus Age, but there is much faience.12 Faience technology, which implies an ability to reach a controlled temperature of 1200 degrees Celsius, begins in the Early Harappan, as at Kalibangan.13 By Mature Harappan times it is widely made and has been reported from Mohenjo-daro, Chanhu-daro, Lohumjo-daro, Harappa, Lothal, Desalpur, Rojdi, Chandigarh, Surkotada, Daulatpur, and Alamgirpur. There is also faience in the Posturban Phase at Sanghol, Ahar Period I, Navdatoli, and Nevasa.14 Faience was found at Nal.15 While there is probably faience in all of the domains of the Indus Civilization, it seems to have been most popular in the north, around Harappa and in the Eastern Domain, where it is especially well represented in the Posturban Phase.

  A reasonably wide range of artifacts was made from faience and its allied materials. The sealings have already been mentioned. Other objects include boxes, bangles, beads, and inlay. Pots were also made, all small. Bangles are characteristic objects with long, flat projections on the other side. Vats called them “cog-wheels.”16 They are long and delicate, and complete specimens are rare; but they are the finest examples of faience craft from the Indus Civilization.

  Kilns and Firing

  There are many ways to fire pottery. Some methods use kilns, while others do not. It is possible to fire pots or clay figurines by simply piling these objects together with some fuel and setting the heap afire. Even the crudest of these arrangements gets the job done, maybe not in an even, fully satisfactory way, but the heat causes to occur some of the physical and chemical changes that transform clay to pottery. The most sophisticated and best-documented kiln in the Indus Age is the funnel-shaped, up-draft type (figure 4.4).17 They have been found at Mohenjo-daro, Harappa, Lothal, Nageshwar, Balakot, Kot Diji, and Lal Shah. Kilns of this type are splendid little pieces of technology.18

  The body of these kilns is a two-story affair: a lower chamber, where the fuel and fire are located, and an upper area, where the material to be baked or heated was placed. These are separated from one another by a floor with holes in it that allow for the circulation of heat and gas. Some provision for supporting the floor from below is made, which may be a pillar or a small wall of bricks, as in some of
the Harappa examples.19 This is all covered during firing with a dome that is usually taken apart at the end of firing to access the contents of the upper chamber, and it is therefore a temporary part of the facility. In front of the domed double chamber is a constricted neck, which gives the whole affair the look of a funnel when viewed on plan. This leads to the lower chamber, which is there for several purposes. It allows the kiln to be fueled and the fire stoked. It also controls the amount of air that gets to the fire and plays a role in determining the temperature and the oxidation/reduction reaction.

  Figure 4.3 Indus Civilization pottery (after Dales and Kenoyer 1986)

  Brick Manufacture

  Burnt bricks are often said to be a characteristic of the Indus Civilization. There are millions of them at Mohenjo-daro. 20 The early literature on the Indus Civilization contains a small phrase, “bricks of the usual size,” which captures the sense of the excavators and their observations on the standardization of this commodity.

  The bricks of Mohenjo-daro are exceptionally well made, yet have no straw or other binding material. They are always rectangular in shape with the exception of those that were used for special purposes, such as the wedge-shaped bricks almost invariably employed in the construction of wells. The bricks were made in an open mould and struck across the top with a piece of wood, as proved by their striated upper surfaces. The bases of bricks are invariably rough, showing that they were made and dried on dusty ground, which is borne out by the frequent presence of potsherds and bits of charcoal adhering to their bases. No bricks have been found that were made on matting.21

  Baked bricks were obviously a valued commodity, and plundering them seems to be as old as their manufacture: “A stack of bricks against the eastern wall of the western wing of the palace (Block 1) provided eloquent proof of the collection of bricks from the lower levels to build the houses of later date. This stack included bricks of various sizes, to many of which the mud mortar still adhered.”22 While we do not have evidence for brick kilns, nor do we know where they were located, abundant use was made of brick kiln wasters.

  Metallurgy

  Introduction

  There is an abundance of metal at sites of the Indus Age. These peoples regularly worked with copper, tin, arsenic, lead, silver, gold, and electrum.23 The documentation of metal begins in a burial at Mehrgarh Period I with native copper in it. The story of Indus metallurgy is one of gradual change, in both technology and the scope of the metals commonly worked.

  Copper Ores in the Greater Indus Region

  Copper ores are widespread and are found in all of the major regions of the earth. In the Subcontinent copper ores are found principally in Baluchistan and the Khetri belt of Rajasthan, with other spotty occurrences.24 There is also a good deal of copper in Oman. This was ancient Magan and was a partner in the maritime commerce of the second half of the third millennium, during the Mature Harappan. Omani copper has a high nickel content and can probably be identified from this trace.

  The Earliest Metallurgy in the Subcontinent

  In Period III at Mehrgarh there are three compartmented seals that demonstrate the casting of copper at this time. There is also a pin with a double spiral head. There are also crucibles in Mehrgarh III.25

  Shaffer has quite correctly noted that the copper— bronze metallurgy of the Indus Civilization is impressive due to the quality and variety of the artifacts as well as their widespread distribution.26 The typology of Indus copper implements includes a wide variety of vessels (vases, jars, dishes, lids, even frying pans), ornaments (pendants, bangles, beads, necklace parts), tools and weapons (axes, knives, blades, projectile points, “razors”), stamp seals, and figurines.27 While there is much smelted, cast, and forged Mature Harappan metal, especially copper—bronze, it is clear that not all of the “furnaces” ascribed to metalworking were used in this way, as shown by Kenoyer and Miller.28 We should be particularly skeptical of older reports of this sort from Harappa and Lothal (figure 4.5).

  Iron in the South Asian Bronze Age

  Figure 4.4 Indus Civilization funnel-shaped, up-draft kiln (by Jan Fairservis)

  Several pieces of iron have been recovered from Bronze Age sites in South Asia. To my knowledge none has been analyzed to determine their technical properties, and we do not know which of them is meteoric and which (if any) were smelted.29 The sites with evidence of this early iron are as follows: Mundigak, Said Qala Tepe, Deh Morasi Ghundai, Ahar, Chanhu-daro, Lothal. “There is also very good evidence for smelted iron in Bronze Age contexts in the Near East and Egypt. Some of these materials have been tested and it can be demonstrated that they were smelted.”30

  Figure 4.5 A selection of Indus Civilization copper—bronze artifacts (after Mackay 1942)

  Those who know the details of copper smelting have demonstrated that metallic iron can be produced as a part of this process.31 This is a complex chemical matter and has to do with the uses of fluxes and their chemistry within the smelting process. The evidence just presented suggests that this actually happened there.

  The Organization of Pyrotechnology during the Mature Harappan

  It has been an assumption for many scholars working on the Indus Civilization that noxious pyrotechnological facilities such as pottery kilns and smelters were kept out of the Indus cities. Perhaps powerful families in good neighborhoods just did not want them around. Those pyrotechnological facilities found in Mohenjo-daro and Harappa were ascribed to the last occupations of these cities, when, presumably, there were no more “good neighborhoods.”

  Heather Miller has called this assumption into question, for Harappa, at least.32 She has informed us of two important aspects of technology at Harappa. First, while there are many kilns there, as well as other sites, actual smelting/melting furnaces are rare. Second, the use of kilns in some areas of Harappa lasted for centuries, forming small areas of specialized activities over protracted periods of time. No one is sure why this took place. Perhaps these Mature Harappan facilities were not as noxious as we once thought.

  Miller’s observations at Harappa are somewhat different from those made at Mohenjo-daro: “The surface survey of Mohenjo-daro shows that most of the heavy, polluting industries (e.g., ceramic and brick firing and metallurgical activities) are not represented in the urban compound. It must be presumed that these activities were carried out in a series of peripheral settlements (now invisible due to alluviation) that supplied the center.”33 But in the Late Period the surface of Mohenjo-daro was littered with pottery wasters, sometimes in heavy concentrations. 34 A similar case can be made for metallurgy with not fewer than eleven occurrences of copper slag and crucibles there.

  These observations are tentative, of course, since we know so little about Mohenjo-daro below the Late levels there. This is a contrast to Harappa, where the Early Harappan is much better documented. So, in the end, Miller could be right. We just need a good deal more work at Mohenjo-daro to confirm or deny this.

  OTHER TECHNOLOGICAL FEATURES OF THE INDUS CIVILIZATION

  There was much technology of the Indus Civilization that was not primarily dependent on heat, and it is to these important activities that attention is now turned.

  Stamp Seal Cutting

  The typical stamp seal was made of a soft gray stone in the family of minerals that can conveniently be called steatite. This is the softest of the minerals and is rated the lowest number 1 on the Mohs’ scale of hardness, so soft that it can be scratched by a fingernail. The Indus craftspeople clearly selected this easily carved mineral to work with. The carving tools may have included shell, chert, or copper, all of which would have worked efficiently with steatite. Marshall notes that “it has been found by experiment that the sharp chert flakes cut steatite very well.”35

  If steatite is subjected to heat, it is slightly hardened to about 4 on the Mohs’ scale. This was often done since it makes the seals wear better. The seals were also often glazed white, apparently to make their outer surfaces a uniform color, improving the
ir luster and beauty. Mohammad Sana Ullah found that this covering was a fused powder of steatite.36 Thus, furnaces are one of the pieces of physical evidence for a seal-cutting establishment.

  The following description of the steps in making a square steatite Indus stamp seal is taken from my own observations as well as from observations in Mackay (see figure 7.1).37

  The steatite was first sawn into blanks of the approximate size and shape of the seal, including the thickness needed to accommodate the boss. Mackay gives a table of seal sizes that range from 1.25 by 1.25 centimeters to 6.85 by 6.85 centimeters.38 A rough boss was then cut. This was done with four saw cuts parallel to the face of the seal, thinning it. These “flats” were then removed by taking four additional saw cuts at right angles, at the edge of the reserved hump of the boss. We know from examples from Chanhu-daro that the boss was left in an unfinished state while the seal itself was smoothed of saw marks and prepared for cutting.

  The animal or other device below the script was the first carving on a seal. We know from Chanhu-daro examples that the design was roughed out on the surface with a sharp point. Some unfinished seals were covered with a thick coating of red ocher, the use of which is not yet known. Various devices were completely carved and finished as a single operation, before even roughing out the inscription was undertaken.