The Indus Civilization Read online

  Wheeler went back to Taxila as his first venture into the field. He was, after all, the preeminent excavator of Roman sites in England, and Taxila would produce materials with which he was familiar.

  These intensive training excavations produced a cadre of competent field archaeologists, which fanned out into government service and universities. The only significant person who was not part of the training schools was H. D. Sankalia, who, in a different context, was trained as a field-worker by Wheeler, not Mackay, as has been suggested.56 South Asian archaeology owes a great debt to Wheeler. These training excavations instilled in a generation of field-workers the need for clear problem orientation, discipline, and sound recording.

  Figure 1.14 Stuart Piggott

  The Wheeler—Piggott Paradigm

  Stuart Piggott did not join Wheeler in the ASI, but he did study archaeology while in British India during World War II (figure 1.14). He and Wheeler set about creating a new paradigm for the Harappan Civilization that differed substantially from the one that had been put forward by Marshall, Mackay, and Childe.

  The new paradigm had begun at Harappa on Wheeler’s first visit to the site, before he had even begun to excavate there. He saw in the AB Mound a citadel to defend the inhabitants of the city from attack. During times of peace, the city’s priests and godhead were proposed to have been there. Based on what Wheeler knew of Mesopotamian civilization, the times “produced in India a social organization not altogether unlike those of the contemporary west”;57 and “in Sumer, the wealth and discipline of the city-state were vested in the chief deity, i.e. in the priesthood or a Priest-King. The civic focus was the exalted temple, centre of an elaborate and carefully ordered secular administration under divine sanction.”58 This led Wheeler to think of the Harappan Civilization in a similar way:

  It can no longer be doubted that, whatever the source of their authority—and a dominant religious element may fairly be assumed—the lords of Harappa administered their city in a fashion not remote from that of the Priest-Kings or governors of Sumer and Akkad. In other words, the social structure of Harappa conformed in principle with that of the other great riverine civilizations of the day.59

  Here, we have returned very close to something that Marshall wisely abandoned in 1926: Indo-Sumerian civilization.

  Piggott follows this line of thought, but is more subtle in his treatment of Sumerian matters. His version of the paradigm is found in his book Prehistoric India: “A state ruled by priest-kings, wielding autocratic and absolute power from two main seats of government, and with the main artery of communication between the capital cities provided by a great navigable river, seems, then, to be the reasonable deduction from the archaeological evidence of the civilization of Harappa.”60

  Wheeler pursues this theme in a book meant for a wide audience. In this work he uses such phrases as the following to characterize his understanding of the Harappan Civilization: “All is orderly and regulated . . . dull, a trifle lacking in the stimulus of individuality”; the “absence or suppression of personality in its details from street to street”; and “this sense of regimentation”; and in another place he refers to the “astonishing sameness of the civilization . . . another quality of it is its isolation.”61

  The presence of citadels and the lack of evidence for warfare posed a problem for Wheeler and Piggott. Without evidence for arms and warfare, where was the enemy—from whom were the priest-kings protecting themselves? Wheeler addresses this problem in the first edition of The Indus Civilization.

  The Indus Civilization inevitably derived its wealth from a combination of agriculture and trade. How far these sources were supplemented and enlarged by military conquest is at present beyond conjecture, but it is to be supposed that the wide extent of the civilization was initially the product of something more forcible than peaceful penetration. True, the military element does not loom large amongst the extant remains, but it must be remembered that at present we know almost nothing of the earliest phase of the civilization.

  As at present known, fortifications at the two major cities are confined to the citadels; it is not apparent that the lower city was in either case fenced. This in itself suggests that the function of the armed citadel may have been as much the affirmation of domestic authority as a safeguard against external aggression. Until, however, the negative evidence in respect of the lower city is stronger than it is at present, too much stress may not be laid upon this interpretation.62

  The problem with envisioning the high mounds at Mohenjo-daro and Harappa as citadels has not improved since 1953, and the concept has been dropped by most modern interpreters of the Harappan Civilization. Since it is not known what kind of architecture was on the summit of the AB Mound at Harappa, it is difficult to be definitive there. But the Mound of the Great Bath at Mohenjo-daro seems to have been a place of ritual, the elevation being a symbol of the auspicious, rather than a safeguard against attack. It was also a place of storage, and this does bring an important economic function into the domain of the religious establishment.

  Some prominent features of the Marshall paradigm were carried forward in the Wheeler—Piggott interpretation. Analogy, not likeness, with Sumer and Egypt is a feature of both, and the same justification for its use is given: The three civilizations were all members of a larger class of historical phenomena. A wetter climate was also postulated, and the sameness of the remains was highlighted in both views. There is little difference between these interpretations in their treatment of Harappan craft production and “science.”

  Many of the elements of these two syntheses are radically different. With Marshall, we learn of Harappan trade, commerce, and shared ideology; with Wheeler and Piggott, we are informed about priest-kings, temple complexes, state granaries, and the nature of theocratic power. Marshall’s effective use of his knowledge of the Indian tradition and ethnographic analogy disappears from later reasoning, being replaced by a comparative method and such notions as Indo-Sumerian civilization. The Wheeler—Piggott paradigm changed Marshall’s Harappans from austere, peaceful, perhaps even boring, urban merchant burghers, whose beliefs were harbingers of Indian ideologies, into a people victimized by despotic priest-kings who wielded absolute power from remote citadels, where they safeguarded themselves and the gods who justified their authority.

  PARTITION, INDEPENDENCE, AND MORE RECENT DIGGING

  The description of the discovery of the Indus Age would be incomplete without some recognition of more recent projects that have played a role in shaping our perceptions of the Harappan Civilization. This research is not so distant from us that it can be considered historical, yet it is very much a part of the substance of this book. There are, however, several undertakings that deserve special attention because of their overall impact on our understanding of the Indus Age. They are enumerated more or less in the order in which they were initiated.

  At partition, the archaeologists in the new Indian nation were isolated from the Indus Civilization. Most of the sites and the two great metropolitan centers were in equally new Pakistan. This led Indian archaeologists to begin an intensive period of exploration followed by excavation of key sites. The following contains a minimum of documentation, better coverage of which is available.63

  The first of the key projects was undertaken by S. R. Rao of the ASI, who began intensive exploration in Gujarat. This led to the excavation of Rangpur and Lothal.64 These two bodies of work, which were multiyear programs, brought to light important new material that redefined the borderlands of the Harappan Civilization. Rao’s explorations and excavations set protohistoric archaeology in this region on a new course, and his site of Lothal has proven to be an extremely important place in terms of understanding the Mature Harappan. Rao’s work in Gujarat has been carried forward by J. P. Joshi and his explorations and excavations in Kutch, especially at Surkotada, my own work at Rojdi and in the Ghelo and Kalubhar Valleys, and more recently by R. S. Bisht at Dholavira.

  In 1955, a ye
ar after Rao began his excavations at Lothal, his colleague in Pakistan, F. A. Khan, initiated a project at Kot Diji.65 The Kot Diji project defined this aspect of the Early Harappan and documented the relationship between the Kot Dijian assemblage and the Mature Harappan. Work was also undertaken by the Pakistan Department of Archaeology at the Neolithic, Early Harappan, and Iron Age site of Sarai Khola.66

  Kalibangan was taken under excavation for nine seasons (1960—1961 to 1968—1969) by B. B. Lal and B. K. Thapar, both of whom had participated in the Wheeler field schools.67 This was the first horizontal excavation of an Early Harappan settlement and informed us of the nature of both the Early and Mature Harappan in the Sarasvati valley.

  There are two current excavations in India at Indus cities. The first of these is at Dholavira, on the island of Kadir in Kutch. This is a massive settlement of about 60 hectares, built largely of stone, with large public spaces and huge cisterns and a magnificent water management system.68

  The other excavation is at Rakhigarhi in Hissar District of Haryana, just to the west of Delhi. The ASI excavations there are only in their third year, and not much is known of them. But, there seems to be a Mature Harappan cemetery there, and an impressive number of stamp seals have been found at this site, which is at least 80 hectares in size.69

  CONCLUSIONS

  The discovery of the Indus Age was an act of pure archaeological adventure. The pioneers in this effort were Marshall, Sahni, Banerji, Vats, and Dikshit, who knew early literature on the archaeology of the Indus region and would not let slip their knowledge of the enigmatic seals from Harappa. This awareness and their curiosity led them to Harappa and Mohenjo-daro and on to “First Light on a Long Forgotten Civilization,” to use Marshall’s words. The early work at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro was soon expanded to other sites, eventually including the 206 excavated sites of the Indus Age, including 96 excavated Mature Harappan settlements.

  A part of the research that began with the excavations at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro led to the discovery that the rise of urbanization in the Greater Indus region rests on a long history of food-producing peoples. This is the topic to which we turn next.

  NOTES

  1 Marshall 1931i.

  2 Marshall 1924; Sayce 1924.

  3 Cunningham 1875.

  4 The following paragraphs have been taken and edited from the introduction to Possehl 1999b.

  5 This is a cliché, I know, but nonetheless true.

  6 Marshall 1925—26: 75.

  7 Possehl 1982.

  8 Joshi 1984.

  9 Possehl 1992 and 1997c.

  10 Smith 1997.

  11 Possehl 1997c.

  12 Rgveda book X, hymn 75, verse 7; Griffith 1896.

  13 Lambrick 1964; Holmes 1968; Flam 1999; Possehl 1999b: 298—302.

  14 Rgveda book II, hymn 41, verses 16—17, modified after Griffith 1896.

  15 Lambrick 1964: 31.

  16 Possehl 1999b: 372—84.

  17 Marshall 1931b: 2—4.

  18 Wheeler 1953: 4—8; Piggott 1950: 135.

  19 Raikes and Dyson 1961.

  20 Singh 1971, see also Singh et al. 1974.

  21 Singh, Wasson, and Agrawal 1990.

  22 Possehl 1996b; Misra 1984.

  23 Ghosh 1953b: 31.

  24 There are several good sources for the history of Indian archaeology, some of which also focus on the discovery of the Harappan Civilization and related prehistoric remains in the Subcontinent. These sources can be used to provide the documentation for this story, which has been abbreviated in this account; Ghosh 1953b; Roy 1961; Chakrabarti 1988; Jansen 1986; Possehl 1999b: 38—154.

  25 Possehl 1999b: 44—45.

  26 Possehl 1999b: 45; Dani 1950.

  27 Cunningham 1875: 106.

  28 Cunningham 1875: 106—7.

  29 Marshall 1923—24: 48.

  30 Dikshit 1924—25: pl. XVI; Possehl 1999b: 71.

  31 Dikshit 1924—25: 71.

  32 Marshall 1925—26: 75.

  33 Mackay 1925b.

  34 Mackay 1937—38.

  35 Marshall 1926—27: 53; see also Possehl 1999b: 89.

  36 Marshall 1931i.

  37 Childe 1934: 205.

  38 Raikes and Dyson 1961.

  39 Marshall 1931g: 91, cf. 102—3.

  40 Childe 1934: 205—6.

  41 Marshall 1931g: 95.

  42 Marshall 1931a: 2, 1931g: 96.

  43 Marshall 1931d: 41.

  44 Marshall 1931d: 42.

  45 Marshall 1931e.

  46 Childe 1934: 207—8.

  47 Marshall 1931h: 103—5.

  48 Mackay 1943.

  49 Mackay 1943: vii.

  50 Sankalia 1978: 21—24.

  51 Mackay 1943: vii; Emeneau, personal communication 1988.

  52 Possehl 1999b: 115—28.

  53 Wheeler 1955: 186.

  54 Wheeler 1955: 190.

  55 Wheeler 1955: 192.

  56 Chakrabarti 1988: 177.

  57 Wheeler 1947: 74.

  58 Wheeler 1947: 74.

  59 Wheeler 1947: 76.

  60 Piggott 1950: 153.

  61 Wheeler 1950: 28—29, original emphasis.

  62 Wheeler 1953: 52—53.

  63 Possehl 1999b: 139—41.

  64 Rao 1963a, 1979, 1985.

  65 Khan 1965.

  66 Halim 1972a, 1972b.

  67 Lal 1981; Thapar 1975.

  68 Bisht 1991.

  69 Nath 1998.

  CHAPTER 2

  The Beginnings of the Indus Age

  SETTING THE SCENE

  The mastery of agriculture and management of domesticated animals was one of the great revolutions in human history. It involved the combined arts of food production and domestication, which led to significant changes in human society, increases in population, and immense human biological change, not all of which was positive. The beginnings of village life and the symbiosis between agriculturalists and pastoralists, so important in understanding ancient India and Pakistan, originate here. The revolution ultimately set the scene for the rise of urbanization in South Asia and the Old World in general.

  The potency and vigor inherent in food production and domestication were critical in sustaining the large populations implied by urbanization. There is a link, a deep causality, between the development of food production, village farming communities, and the rise of city life, with a single unbroken historical narrative involving the development of early villages and pastoral camps and the transition to urbanization in the Greater Indus region.

  DEVELOPMENT OF FOOD PRODUCTION AND DOMESTICATION

  The “Neolithic”: An Outdated Term

  In well-established but outmoded terminology, the beginnings of food production and domestication define the Neolithic period. The Neolithic was originally defined as the era within which ground-stone tools and pottery made their first appearance in local archaeological sequences. The great synthesizer of Old World archaeology, V. Gordon Childe, revised this definition when he proposed the Neolithic as the period within which humans first used domesticated plants and animals for food production and settled into villages and pastoral camps. This shifted the definition from a technological stage to one relating to the settlement and subsistence system of a people.

  We know that ground stone and pottery appear in local archaeological sequences quite independently from food production, sometimes much earlier, as with the Jomon ceramics in Japan. While the study of ground stone and pottery is interesting and has its own importance, archaeologists know that these technologies did not have the tremendous impact on human societies that food production did. Therefore, Childe’s shift in definition is a very good one; one more meaningful to the human condition and career than just stones and pots. It is a good enough idea, in fact, that it calls for new terminology to assist in the prevention of misunderstanding; something attempted by the American archaeologist Robert J. Braidwood.1 Following Braidwood’s lead, I think in terms of an era of primary village farming communities and
pastoral camps, rather than a Neolithic period.

  Early Domesticates: Near East and South Asia

  The logical place to look for the early domestication of plants and animals is within the habitats of their wild forms. In the case of the Near Eastern civilizations and the Indus, this involves the wild forms of barley, wheat, cattle, sheep, and goats. Botanical surveys in the twentieth century have indicated that wild barley is present in the Indo-Iranian borderlands, as are the wild cattle, sheep, and goats that were domesticated just after the end of the great Ice Age, about 10,000 years ago. But wild wheat has not been documented on the Indo-Iranian borderlands, and this fact calls for some discussion.2