Indus Valley Civilization and Technology: Final Draft

Spread of the Indus Valley Civilization & Locations of its Major Sites

The Indus Valley Civilization  is still mysterious to Western understanding even to this day, and it can be difficult to find reliable information since much of the material published about it is in the native languages of the region. Evidence of this civilization is found across present-day India and Pakistan and encompasses a geographical area twice the size of Dynastic Egypt or the area controlled by a Sumerian city-state (Kenoyer 1997).

The time span of the Indus Valley civilization has been segmented in very much the same way as the civilization of the Maya in Mesoamerica has been by typifying the cultural aspects of the peak of the civilization (Kenoyer 1997). Some of the distinct characteristics of this phase of civilization are the production and use of:

• written seals
• beads and other jewelry
• standardized weights
• standardized bricks
• terracotta toys
• planned cities with monumental architecture and intricate water management

All of the evidence for the Indus Civilization is archaeological (illustrated by the image below), so it is classified as proto-historic due to the lack of written record keeping by the people of the Indus Valley. The rise and fall of the civilization is hypothetical considering this lack of historical record and also because there is a lack of continuation of the Indus Valley culture into the successive cultures of the Indian subcontinent (Vahia and Yadav 2011). 

Mohenjo Daro excavations

However, records of the civilization by other Middle Eastern and south Asian cultures form the sole historical references of the Indus Valley. This automatically suggests contact, communication, and trade between the Indus civilization and others throughout the Old World. Evidence for interaction within the Indus Valley by way of trade networks that connect major urban centers with smaller regional centers and resource locations was found by survey and excavation of settlements throughout the region (Kenoyer 1997). 

Map of Trade/Cultural Exchanges throughout the Indus Valley

Examples of artifacts that reference Indus Valley trade are the inscribed seals (imaged at right), clay models of beast of burden driven carts/wagons (example imaged below), and the remains of boats archaeologists have discovered that were used for coastal maritime trade. Trade between societies, such as the Indus Valley and Mesopotamia, would require some form of standardization of value of traded goods. This is an interesting concept to study since neither of these civilizations used anything we would consider a formal type of money, yet there is artifact evidence that Indus Valley goods are found at other non-Indus sites (Lamberg-Karlovsky 1972).

Terracotta Figurine depicting a beast of burden drawn cart, thought to be a miniature version of ones used in the civilization's regional trade.

Even though the Indus Valley had contact through trade with other civilizations and its cities were walled with  gates, there is no evidence currently of any established military forces or distinct references to ritual or political entities. Archaeologists have interpreted that no single group or individual ruled the civilization or cities for any significant period of time. Instead, it is suggested that the society was controlled by a conglomeration of competing elite groups that held each other and the levels of society in check (Kenoyer 1997). 

Social organization of Indus society is approached by some researchers through the organization of the civilization's different crafts, technological production, and trade. This is difficult to achieve with straight archaeological excavation and recovery since there is no direct evidence of control is found on any level. Ethnoarchaeological practices are thus applied to study the interaction of the availability of resource types, complexity of the manufacturing process, and the cultural or symbolic value of the final products created. Since all of these aspects can fluctuate over time, any control determined for a specific set of variables is isolated to that period of time and difficult to map overtime, so more research is necessary to create a broad understanding of societal control in the Indus Valley. (Kenoyer 1997)

Many technologies that were first developed or improved in the Indus cities provided a foundation for later technologies used in South Asia and other areas of the Old World. Some of the specialized crafts introduced by the Indus Valley civilization are still practiced in the region today. Shell working, ceramics, and bead making are represented in the archaeological record from the early levels that date to around 3300 BC all the way through to the late occupation of the cities around 1700 BC. 

Beadmaking is one such craft which was pioneered by the Indus civilization and a good example of the interaction that occurred across the wide geographical area covered by the Indus Valley. The materials used for beads were sourced from the perimeter of the Indus Valley and were accessed by craftsmen through the overlapping trade networks that terminated at the major settlements of the civilization. There were two separate types of bead manufacturing: hard stone beads and soft or talcose beads. 

Examples of Hard & Soft Stone Indus Beads

Hard stone beads were made from minerals such as agate, carnelian, jasper, and lapis lazuli. These materials cover a wide array of colors and all have a very hard crystalline structure that require multiple manufacturing steps to produce that final bead. Each bead undergoes an intensive process of heating, flaking, grinding, polishing, and drilling (Kenoyer 1997). 

Imagine the meticulous craftsmanship needed to create these almost identical carnelian beads

Soft talcose stone beads are manufactured from steatite or soapstone. The process to create this kind of bead is actually very different than the hard stone bead process. To create a soft stone bead, the sourced material has to be sawed into shape, drilled, ground, and then fired in a high temperature kiln to harden into the final product. 

"Soft" only refers to the type of stone- a lot of work is needed to produce these beads as well

Archaeologists excavating at Harappa found samples of waste from the production of soft stone beads from an earlier and a later deposit and compared the striation marks left by the tools used in the manufacturing process. Marks analyzed on the earlier production waste show that the saw used to cut the beads was of an unrefined form and made from copper which created a soft blade and that the marks were possibly made by an untrained hand. However, no samples of these early saws are found in the deposit. On the other hand, the later waste sample indicated a more refined, harder bladed saw was used to cut out the beads. This analysis backed up by a copper alloy saw was recovered in association to this sample of bead making waste whose blade matches the finer striation marks on the waste.

Also, production of both types of beads- hard stone and soft stone- have long been thought to have occurred together because evidence for both types are found in association with one another in the archaeological record. Analysis of the artifact percentages of these deposits show that this association is actually created as the result of a common secondary dumping site for the waste material from separate, adjacent workshops rather than each type of bead being manufactured by the same artisan.

The Indus Valley sites display a highly sophisticated technology of copper and bronze metalworking, even in the earliest excavated levels of the major cities (Lamberg-Karlovsky 1967). Issues with the integrity of the stratigraphy of early excavations of these major Indus sites makes it harder for present-day archaeologists to track the different developmental stages of the civilization's metallurgy though. However, based upon the wide array of metal artifacts found in these early deposits, it is suggested that these advanced metallurgical skills were known to the inhabitants of the Indus Valley before city constructions began and possibly originated in previous cultures to the west from which the Indus people progressed from. 

A large variety of bronze and  copper artifacts have been recovered from all Indus sites. The most common types are flat axes, chisels, fishhooks, bracelets, arrowheads, spearheads, knives, razors, mirrors, and saws. 

Examples of types of tools and metal works (Lamberg-Karlovsky 1967)

Indus metal working used many kinds of manufacturing processes. For example, from the artifact types mentioned above- flat axes and mirrors were made by open-mold casting; thick knives and chisels were hammered from rods of bronze or copper; and razors, saws, and arrow and spear heads were chiseled from thinly hammered sheets of copper.

Unfortunately, little is known about the means of production used by the Indus metal workers because very little remains of tools or architecture required to perform such a craft. The only two examples for possible metallurgy workshops in the whole of the Indus Valley were discovered at Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa. In a large building close to the Great Bath at Mohenjo-Daro a brick lined pit was discovered with an incredible amount of copper ore that archaeologists have interpreted as a smelting pit  and possibly a casting site. The whole building is thought to have housed the city's metal workers. Also, the only furnace construction found in the region was discovered in the city of Harappa and was constructed to have been powered by large effective bellows positioned above the furnace (Lamberg-Karlovsky 1967).

Array of cubic weight standards: their sizes follow a ratio pattern of 1:2:4:8:16:32:64, after which they increase in a decimal system. This is practically constant across the region.

Building bricks were found to have almost exact dimension ratios of 1:2:4, to some suggesting a mass manufacturing process using molds.

Around 2500 BC, an abrupt increase in growth took place across the Indus Valley (Vahia and Yadav 2011). An expansion of cities occurred with a standardization of construction and architecture. Results of this are the widely known standardized weights and bricks (both pictured above with captions). Since this rapid advancement takes place over such a large geographical area, it is speculated that such a change came about through the agreement and subsequent enactment by all of the elite/governing bodies, rather than by a communication exchange of ideas that would have been too slow for the rate of growth described by the archaeological record.

Terracotta figurines

Terracotta toy figurines, similar to the example above, and other gaming pieces, such as the dice imaged below, have been found all across the Indus Valley. Dice and other game pieces are found regularly around the Indus Valley, used for gaming and commonly made out of ivory. Examples found at Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro show three common marking systems- numbers 1-3 along with longitudinal marks, numbers 1-6 in random pattern, and one artifact with the modern number arrangement (Mackay 1934).

Examples of Indus Valley dice: so modern looking its hard to believe their age, therefore depicted with cut-in of a dice in situ where it was found

Also, artifacts found at Lothal in the Indus Valley display an incredible resemblance to our modern game of chess with a square grided board and game pieces- perhaps the precursor to that type of game (imaged below).

Lothal game board and pieces artifacts that suggests an analogy to a modern-day game...

Societies are commonly thought to have to progress through a series of stages to achieve the moniker of "civilization". Though what the stages are or the number of them is highly contested and different for each society, social stratification is recognized as a necessary hallmark of a civilization. The Indus Valley Civilization is considered such, and while there is a lack of historical record to define the preceding incarnations of the civilization there is undoubtedly stratification evident from the organization of its cities (Vahia and Yadav 2011).

If this got you excited about Indus Valley Civilization and want to find out more about it:

• Visit my colleagues work at: Harappan Culture of the Indus River Valley Civilization
• Check out all things Indus Valley with pictures and the latest news: Harappa.com

Bibliography

Kenoyer, Jonathan M. "Trade and technology of the Indus Valley: new insights from Harappa, Pakistan." World Archaeology 29.2 (1997): 262-280.

Lamberg‐Karlovsky, C. C. "Archeology and Metallurgical Technology in Prehistoric Afghanistan, India, and Pakistan." American Anthropologist 69.2 (1967): 145-162.

Lamberg-Karlovsky, Carl C. "Trade mechanisms in Indus-Mesopotamian interrelations." Journal of the American Oriental Society (1972): 222-229.

Mackay, Ernest John Henry. "Further excavations at Mohenjo-daro." Journal of the Royal Society of Arts 82.4233 (1934): 206-224.

Vahia, Mayank N., and Nisha Yadav. "Reconstructing the History of Harappan Civilization." Journal of Social Evolution and History 10 (2011): 67-86.