The Indus Civilization Read online

  The inscription was then carved. Mackay suggests that “the seal-cutters probably kept a stock of seals by them and added the inscriptions as required,” something that has not yet been confirmed.39

  The back of the seal and the boss were then finished. The boss was carved to a rounded shape and a deep V was carved along the length at right angles to the perforation, which was done next. This was most often a two-step drilling operation, which was usually angled slightly down into the body of the seal from opposite sides of the boss. We presume that this hole took a cord used to suspend, or hold, the seal. There are many broken bosses but few of the holes show wear along the edges, as would occur if the seal were moving back and fourth along a cord. This suggests that the seal was tied onto the cord so that it did not move. In fact, given the fragile nature of the steatite, the seal might well have been wrapped in cloth to protect it from being banged around and moving on the suspension cord.

  As a final step, the seal was coated with a mixture of steatite dust mixed with water and then baked, fusing the coating and hardening the steatite body of the seal itself; pyrotechnology crosses our path once again. The resulting product was a seal with a beautiful, even white, lustrous surface.

  Bead Making

  Beads are by far the most popular form of ornamentation that survives in the archaeological record of the Indus Age. If one includes the masses of steatite microbeads, there are hundreds of thousands of beads, in a wide array of types and materials, each requiring its own manufacturing technology. This is a huge subfield, far larger than can be fully covered here.

  Hard-Stone Beads

  The most spectacular beads of the Indus Age are those made of hard stones, generally with a high silica content. The generic word I use for the most translucent of these is agate. Chalcedony, both banded and clear, is one among these rocks. The stones of this general class that the Harappans employed in bead making are given in table 4.1.

  Table 4.1 Stones used for Mature Harappan bead making

  Alabaster Amazonite Amethyst

  Azurite Bloodstone Breccia

  Caringorn Chalcedony Chert (brown and black)

  Chrysoprase Hematite Hornblende

  Jade Jasper Lapis lazuli

  Limestone Moonstone Onyx

  Opal Plasma Quartz (milky and rose)

  Rock crystal Serpentine Turquoise

  India and Pakistan have been famous for their native lapidary industries for millennia, since the Indus Age, in fact. Edward Balfour tells us that small stone cups from India were worth 70,000 sesterces in the days of Pompey.40 Nero paid the round figure of a million sesterces for an Indian cup.

  There is evidence for the manufacture of hard-stone beads at many sites of the Indus Age. The early sites are Mehrgarh III, Ghazi Shah I, Amri Ic and Id, as well as Shahr-i Sokhta II. During the Mature Harappan, we have a bead shop at both Chanhu-daro and Lothal. Mackay notes that “proof that some beads made from hard stones were actually manufactured at Mohenjo-daro is afforded by the unfinished specimens that we have found, though no actual bead factory has yet come to light.”41 More evidence in this regard comes from the intensive surface exploration of Mohenjo-daro. In the Moneer Area there was found the co-occurrence of several classes of artifacts indicating craft activity, but the “thousands of flakes of agate, chalcedony chert drills and other specialized tools form the largest assemblage of indicators of semi-precious stone working so far identified at Mohenjo-daro.”42

  The Sequence of Hard-Stone Bead Manufacturing

  Based on hundreds of archaeological specimens, especially those from Chanhu-daro and Lothal, it has been possible to outline the sequence of hard-stone bead manufacturing.

  Roughing the Bead This begins with chipping out a rough blank, then refining the shape with a second, more delicate round of knapping. There is also evidence for sawing during the early stages of shaping at Chanhu-daro. 43 Mackay felt that this implied the use of an abrasive, a sound idea without direct evidence. At this point the bead has its rough shape and size.

  The chipping marks were then ground away on a hone. This was time-consuming handwork, at the end of which the bead had its final shape and size, but with an unpolished surface.

  Drilling the Bead The bead was then drilled. Indus Age beads often show little cup marks, pecked into both ends, which served the function of small starter holes.44 A drill with a hard-stone bit was used. The stone we have from archaeological sites is chert or a hard green stone we believe to be phtanite. This was used with rotary motion, implying the use of a bow or possibly a pump drill. Drilling proceeded first from one end of the bead to about the center and was finished with a second hole penetrating from the opposite side, the two holes meeting in the middle. Even very small beads were drilled in this two-step manner. There is also evidence that not all beads were drilled. Sometimes the perforation was carefully pecked through using a delicate chipping technique.45

  Polishing the Bead We have no direct evidence for the polishing process in prehistoric times, but the best guesses include moving the beads and a slurry of light abrasives inside a sealed bag of some kind (probably leather). The principle employed here is the same as that used by modern rock hounds and their tumblers; but the mechanics and materials would have been quite different during the Indus Age.

  Making Carnelian

  Carnelian, also known as sard, is a form of chalcedony that has been turned red by heating. It is rarely found in nature. Heating the stone causes the oxides of iron to become yellow, orange, and red. Some stones turn a uniform deep cherry red. These were prized objects for the Indus craftspeople.

  Etching Carnelian Beads

  One of the distinctive bead types of the Mature Harappan is that of etched carnelian. These are red with white designs (rarely black) that were traded far and wide as a part of the Middle Asian Interaction Sphere.46 They were also prized by the Harappans themselves, who found them worthy enough to fake (figure 4.6).47

  The art of etching stone is known in modern Sindh, and Mackay found one practicing craftsman in Sehwan near Lake Manchar who give him a demonstration.48 The process began with the juice extracted from the tips of young shoots of a bush called kirar in Sindhi (Capparis aphylla). The informant then ground washing soda to a fine powder and mixed it with water in a cup. He poured a small quantity of this on the kirar and rubbed the whole carefully together to a semifluid mass. Then the craftsman strained this mixture through a piece of linen into a large empty mussel shell, and the “paint” was ready.49

  This paint was applied to a carnelian stone using a reed pen. The painted stone was then allowed to dry, first in the hand, then by placing it on a metal plate over a charcoal fire. When fully dry, the carnelian was covered with live coals and the fire fanned for about five minutes. The piece was then removed from the heat and allowed to cool slowly for about 10 minutes under an inverted cup, at which point the craftsman “rubbed his piece of carnelian briskly with a rag and handed it over for inspection.”50 It was perfect!

  Figure 4.6 A selection of Indus Civilization etched carnelian beads from Chanhu-daro (after Mackay 1942)

  Imitation Etched Carnelian

  Etched carnelian was so prized during the Mature Harappan that it generated a market for a cheap imitation product. These have been found at Mohenjo-daro, and they are all of steatite or steatite paste.51

  CONCLUDING STATEMENT ON TECHNOLOGY

  The following sections discuss three statements of the broader patterns of Mature Harappan technology, mostly drawn from the research on craft organization at Harappa52 and Mohenjo-daro.53 These can be used to give us an overview of the Harappan way of organizing their technological activities.

  Overall Site Structure

  The supposed order of Indus sites is not seen in the distribution of craft activities. Pyrotechnological facilities were found in all of the major parts of both Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, at least during the Late Period at the latter site. There is also a suggestion that Mature Harappan technology took p
lace at “a cloud of minor sites focused around the major urban center . . . many of the peripheral settlements appear to be specialized industrial sites.”54

  The Structure of Individual Mounds

  There is an unexplained tendency at Harappa for manufacturing activities to be situated on the southern half of the settlement mounds. This is not due to prevailing wind patterns, since lapidary workshops are also located there and these involved the limited use of heat. No one is quite sure why this pattern is present.

  The Distribution of Particular Crafts

  There is a tendency at Harappa for copper smelting/melting debris and slags, as well as pottery firing debris, to be separate from debris from other crafts. On the other hand, lapidary activities (semiprecious stone, chert, steatite, and maybe ground stone) are usually found together, often in association with shell working. If this is a valid observation, one can see differences in the organization of pyrotechnological activities, as contrasted to the extractive-reductive crafts. According to Miller, this pattern might also be present at Mohenjo-daro.55

  Blackman and Vidale note that the excavations and intensive surface survey at Mohenjo-daro inform us that nonpolluting industries were also located within the city.56 These industries were involved in the manufacture of seals, beads and shell ornaments, and luxury and other prestige items probably consumed within the city. There is a “suburban” shell-working area, approximately 500 meters northeast of the Lower Town.

  During the Late Period at Mohenjo-daro, there seems to have been two patterns of pottery production in the city. There was a kind of potter’s district, as well as individual household potters.57 We do not know enough about the earlier occupations at Mohenjo-daro, and whether this pattern was present then.

  Sometimes the forming stages of such pyrotechnological crafts as pottery, faience, and copper were undertaken near their firing places. For example, pottery-forming tools were found during the excavation of a pottery kiln on the northwest corner of Mound E at Harappa. There is also evidence that the firing of steatite took place in the vicinity of its forming stages, as represented by the steatite-coated clay containers found together with talc/steatite and other lithic debris in the general debris levels of the southwest corner of Mound ET.58

  Blackman and Vidale propose that some commodities may have been manufactured at only one Mature Harappan site and that others were the product of quite specific, if not exclusive, manufacture.59 The first point is illustrated at Chanhu-daro: Blackman and Vidale propose that this may have been the only place where the very large “long-barrel” carnelian beads were made, since not one rough-out or blank of this bead type has been found at either Mohenjo-daro or Harappa. Their second point is made in the following way:60 “The palaeo-technological analysis of the shell industries of Mohenjo-daro by Kenoyer61 shows that the manufacture of ladles from murex . . . shells is definitely under-represented in that site, while this activity represents one of the most important industries at the coastal site of Nageshwar in Saurashtra62 and in the workshops of Chanhu-daro.”63

  The study of these broad patterns in the structure of Indus technology is a growing field, one within which there is much more to be learned about the organization of Harappan life.

  NOTES

  1 Halim and Vidale 1984.

  2 Halim and Vidale 1984: 96.

  3 Vidale and Miller 2000.

  4 Mackay 1937—38: 598.

  5 Rao 1985: 582.

  6 Vandiver 1995.

  7 Mackay 1943: 86.

  8 Wright 1991: 81—82.

  9 Wright 1991: 80—81.

  10 Wright 1986: 9.

  11 Chakrabarti 1978.

  12 Mackay 1931n.

  13 Lal 1989: 321.

  14 Lal 1989: 321.

  15 Hargreaves 1929: 43.

  16 Vats 1940: 448, pl. CXXXVIII, no. 2.

  17 See Miller 1997 for a review of Indus kilns.

  18 Wright 1991: 78.

  19 Vats 1940: 471.

  20 Fairservis 1967: 39 suggests 5 million.

  21 Mackay 1931d: 266.

  22 Mackay 1937—38: xiii.

  23 Agrawal 2000.

  24 Possehl 1999b: 232 for map.

  25 Jarrige et al. 1995: 249.

  26 Shaffer 1992: 448.

  27 Agrawal 2000: 77—93; Heidi Miller 2000.

  28 Kenoyer and Miller 1999.

  29 Shaffer 1984; Possehl and Gullapalli 1999; Datta 1998.

  30 Waldbaum 1980: 69—70.

  31 Cooke and Aschenbrenner 1975.

  32 Heather Miller 2000.

  33 Blackman and Vidale 1992: 38.

  34 Halim and Vidale 1984: 63.

  35 Marshall 1925—26: 86.

  36 Mackay 1931i: 379.

  37 Mackay 1931i: 377—79, and 1943: 145—49.

  38 Mackay 1931i: 372.

  39 Mackay 1931i: 378.

  40 Balfour 1885: vol. 1, 555.

  41 Mackay 1937—38: 50.

  42 Halim and Vidale 1984: 64.

  43 Mackay 1943: 211.

  44 Piperno 1973, 1983.

  45 Kenoyer 1993: 513.

  46 Reade 1979.

  47 Mackay 1937—38: 517.

  48 Mackay 1933: 143.

  49 Mackay 1933: 144.

  50 Mackay 1933: 144.

  51 Mackay 1937—38: 517, pl. CLVII, nos. 8—12, and 506—7.

  52 Heather Miller 2000.

  53 Blackman and Vidale 1992.

  54 Blackman and Vidale 1992: 38.

  55 Heather Miller 2000.

  56 Blackman and Vidale 1992: 38.

  57 Tosi, Bondioli, and Vidale 1984.

  58 Heather Miller 2000.

  59 Blackman and Vidale 1992: 38.

  60 Blackman and Vidale 1992: 38.

  61 Kenoyer 1984.

  62 Bhan and Kenoyer 1984.

  63 Mackay 1943.

  CHAPTER 5

  The Architecture of the Indus Age

  ONE OF THE MOST REMARKABLE FEATURES OF THE INDUS Civilization is the baked-brick architecture of Mohenjodaro, with splendidly preserved buildings lining its streets and lanes. This is the largest Bronze Age city in the world where one can walk down streets well defined by the high walls of homes and other buildings, climb the stairways used in antiquity, peer down ancient wells, and stand in bathing rooms used over 4,000 years ago. One feels a sense of being in a living community; Mohenjo-daro is an extraordinary, unique place (figure 5.1).

  The architecture and town planning of the Indus Civilization in some ways is another part of technology and it should be thought of as an aspect of that quite vigorous part of the Indus ideology. While this chapter addresses much of the architecture of the Indus Civilization, there is much more said on this topic in the tour of Mohenjodaro (chapter 11).

  THE EARLY MATERIAL

  There is a great deal of mud-brick architecture in Stages Two and Three of the Indus Age. Many of the buildings were equipped with stone foundations and may have had some of the superstructure made in stone as well. This stone is useful for purposes of stability, but it also protects the superstructure from groundwater rising into the mud through capillary action.

  An important feature of architecture in the first half of the third millennium was the growing use of large platforms, which served a number of purposes. First, they elevated settlements as protection against floods. At other times they served as solid, level foundations for buildings. These platforms, one side of which might be several tens of meters long, also served the purpose of protecting one edge of a settled area from general erosion and of forming a manmade boundary, segregating a particular settled area from those around it. Finally, some of the platforms were substructures that elevated large sections of a settlement, as in the case of the Mound of the Great Bath. Massive platforms emerge at Mohenjo-daro during the Mature Harappan as one of the fundamental architectural principles on which the city was built.

  THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE INDUS CIVILIZATION

  The architecture of the Indus Civilization is an immense
subject, far more than can be summarized here. The expert on this topic is M. Jansen, whose writings have been liberally used here. Given the broad scope of the topic, along with the presence of a substantial number of sources which are both recent and of high quality, this discussion focuses on a restricted number of themes that have some base in technology: town planning, platform construction, well digging, streets, drainage, and both domestic and special buildings.