New Indus Civilisation Archaeology Postdoc at Cambridge

 A new Cambridge University project on the Indus Civilisation has launched, building upon an earlier project known as the Land, Water and Settlement Project (with whom I've been working since 2009). This new project, 'Winter Rain, Summer Rain: Adaptation, Climate Change, Resilience and the Indus Civilisation (TwoRains)' will investigate the relationship between climate change and the Indus people.

"TwoRains is a five year research project led by Dr Cameron Petrie (Cambridge) that will investigate the resilience and sustainability of South Asia's first complex society, the Indus Civilisation (c.2500-1900 BC), which developed across a range of distinctive environmental contexts where westerly winter rainfall overlapped with the summer rainfall of the Indian Summer Monsoon (ISM). The project will combine cutting edge approaches from Archaeology, Earth Sciences and Geography to reconstruct climate, model rain patterns, and explore societal adaptations and responses to change by combining data on settlement distribution, food production and consumption, and water stress. The data will then be integrated and assessed using agent-based modelling. TwoRains will pursue a series of specific objectives through four interrelated work-packages, focussing on: climate, landscapes, water stress and life-ways, and modelling strategies of adaptation and resilience. By adopting an integrated interdisciplinary approach, TwoRains will ask "Does climate change really cause collapse?", elucidate how particular communities perceived weather and landscape changes, hypothesise why they made the decisions they did, and explore the consequences of those decisions."

The first postdoc for this project has just been announced- a two-year Cambridge PDRA working on remote sensing and GIS. The successful applicant for the position of Research Associate will conduct research within Work-package 2. Landscapes; and will specifically be involved in the use of remote sensing and satellite imaging data to carry out GIS-based image classification and spatial analysis in order to model the settled landscapes of northwest India. Applicants should have, or must be expecting to complete, a Ph.D. in Archaeology or a related field before they take up this position. Research experience in remote sensing and GIS is required. Previous experience with statistics and modelling would be beneficial.

Deadline: 9 November 2015. Start date: 1 January 2016 or as soon as possible thereafter

Further details here: http://www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/8320/

Expedition to North Gujarat, India: Beyond the Indus

A colleague of mine is working for a great archaeological project studying the archaeology of Gujarat. The project has recently begun a blog as part of an outreach programme. The blog discusses the work as well as the travel experiences of the team as they conduct field research in Gujarat.

It should be of interest to those who would like to know more about archaeology in India and how archaeologists go about their day-to-day work!

Indus Seal Discovery in Pakistan

There was a recent news feature about an Indus seal discovered in Pakistan. These seals, which are one of the most distinctive and evocative forms of material culture associated with the Indus, are generally associated with large urban sites such as Mohenjo-daro, although this is not exclusive.

This particular seal (for which an image is unfortunately unavailable at the moment) unusually depicts an ibex. The leader of the Punjab University team, Farzand Masih, says it may demonstrate regional influence or a separate identity. The seal was found in Cholistan.

For more information, here is the link to the news feature.

NatGeo Indus Feature

This is just a little piece on the Indus that National Geographic did a while ago. I'm linking to it for two reasons: Firstly, the Indus is not a hot topic in archaeology, compared to Egypt, Mesopotamia etc, so it tends not to get featured in popular media, which cuts me real deep. So I like to take advantage when it happens. And secondly, this being NatGeo, they've spoken to two excellent Indus archaeologists, among the biggest names today (both are American), and it's good to hear what they have to say about this stuff.

The second link is a wonderful photo of the Great Bath of Mohenjo-daro. It's interesting because it's one of the few monumental structures found in the city, and in the wider Indus. If you compare the Indus to its contemporaries, and everyone inevitably does, this is pretty damn weird. They had the resources, labour and technology to construct big temples or palaces if they wanted to, but these monuments are noticeably absent when you study the cities. This makes Mohenjo-daro unusual among Indus cities, and may mean it was a religious centre of some sort. The Great Bath was made of bricks and lined with bitumen (bit like tar) to prevent leaking. Bathing in it may have been of religious significance, as some kind of ritual cleansing. Many archaeologists believe that there was an element of reverence towards water, perhaps even water-worship, in the Indus religion.

Mohenjo-daro has also been described as a city of wells because of the stunning density of domestic wells throughout the city. No matter what the house size, nearly all structures had access to wells and drains; clearly it was an important part of their way of life.

This post is without a central theme, because I'm still working on the main pieces on the Indus. I did my Master's dissertation on Mohenjo-daro, so always get a bit carried away. The topics of religion and water at Mohenjo-daro will pop up again. Hopefully it'll whet (haha) your appetites for the Indus-tastic posts to come.

Oh, and under the photo it says 'Mohenjo-daro and its sister city, Harappa', which is total rubbish. They were the first big ones discovered, and the only ones for a long time, so everyone thought they were 'twin capitals' or 'sister cities', but we now know that there are five large Indus cities, spread out over a very large area. They are Mohenjo-daro (Sindh, Pakistan), Harappa (Punjab, Pakistan), Ganweriwala (Punjab, Pakistan), Rakhigarhi (Haryana, India) and Dholavira (Gujarat, India).


http://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/ancient/mohenjo-daro.html?fs=travel.nationalgeographic.com

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/guides/history/ancient/enlarge/mohenjo-daro.html

For more photos of Mohenjo-daro, use the link on the right hand side of the page for the website.

The Indus Civilisation: An Introduction

Now, in case you read the last post and were wondering why you should care, that's what this post is about. The Indus, like Nelson Mandela, Will Shakespeare, and Martin Scorsese shouldn't need an introduction, but I watched the Golden Globes last night and they gave Scorsese one that went on for about ten minutes. So in that spirit, here you go.

Named for the River Indus, the Indus Civilisation is the third oldest in the world; the others being Egypt, Mesopotamia and China. Its geographic span is considerable, and has been estimated at 680,000 square kilometers, which is twice the size of its contemporaries Egypt and Mesopotamia [1]. Its area is admittedly difficult to assess as there are sites such as Shortughai in Afghanistan which is most definitely an Indus site, but happens to be the only one for several hundred kilometers. We do know for sure the Indus culture travelled great distances: the civilization extends to the Pakistani Makran Coast in the west, and beyond Delhi in the east; Shortughai marks its northern extreme, and Gujarat its southern boundary.

The chronology for the Indus looks something like this [2]:

Early Harappan: 3200 BC - 2600 BC
Mature Harappan: 2600 BC - 1900 BC
Late Harappan: 1900 - 1300 BC

The sites of the Indus Civilisation share many material characteristics despite the great distances between them. This has led to many theories about enforced homogeneity, and rigid centralised control, which have recently begun to be disputed (more on this soon). There is an incredible material culture associated with the civilisation: beads and jewellery, standardised weights and seals, figurines, toys, pottery- the list goes on. The Harappans (people of the Indus Civ., named for the site of Harappa) used materials like lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, shells from the sea side, and carnelian from Gujarat. As I mentioned in the last post, their trade networks extended as far west as Mesopotamia.

They had a sophisticated way of life with wonderful levels of technological adeptness, urban planning, craftsmanship (/womanship?), and social organisation. Cities such as Mohenjo-Daro were enormous, with streets, underground sewage systems, and covered drains. Their territory covered hundreds of thousands of kilometers. They had a written script. They marshalled labour resources, traded with far away lands, developed technologies for processing raw materials and creating finished products, and produced seals and weights that hint at complex social organisation.

Unfortunately so little is known about the Harappans today, especially if you compare it to contemporary ancient civilisations. The script, often found on the seals, has never been translated. Cuneiform (used in Mesopotamia) and ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and language have been understood for decades now! The Indus social, religious, political and economic systems, amazing as they must have been, are something archaeologists have to painstakingly piece together now using the material remains. And you thought it was all just fun and games!

Pictured above: Fun and games

The next few blog posts will deal with the crafts, trade networks, and socio-economic and political organisation of the Indus Civilisation. Hopefully this post will have shown you why the Indus is simultaneously so fascinating for archaeologists, and such a challenge.


1 Kenoyer, J. M. 1998. Ancient Cities of the Indus Valley Civilization. Karachi: Oxford University Press.

2 Possehl, G.L. and Rissman, P.C. 1992. The Chronology of Prehistoric India: From Earliest Times to teh Iron Age. In R.W. Ehrich (ed.) Chronologies in Old World Archaeology, 3rd edition. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. V. I: 465-490, V. II: 425-446.

Image is 'The Royal Game of Ur' (Ur is a site in southern Iraq), dated 2600-2400 BC. Made of wood, shell, red limestone and lapis lazuli. An extract from the description reads:

'One of the most popular games of the ancient world... Examples of this 'Game of Twenty Squares' date from about 3000 BC to the first millennium AD and are found widely from the eastern Mediterranean and Egypt to India. A version of the Mesopotamian game survived within the Jewish community at Cochin, South India until modern times.'

From the British Museum website. Click on the link and have a look!
http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/me/t/the_royal_game_of_ur.aspx

The Discovery of the Indus

'Not often has it been given to archaeologists, as it was given to Schliemann at Tiryns and Mycenae, or to Stein in the deserts of Turkestan, to light upon the remains of a long-forgotten civilisation. It looks, however, at this moment, as if we were on the threshold of such a discovery in the plains of the Indus.'

- John H. Marshall in 1924, in the Illustrated London News.

The story of the discovery of the Indus is an exciting one. Marshall, a young man, educated at Cambridge, was sent to India to be Director-General of the Archaeological Survey. Discovery is a tricky word to use here, as people had been aware for a long time that there were ruins or urban remains on the sites of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa; travellers in the 19th century such as Charles Masson had recorded this fact. However, there was no understanding of what they were, who built them, or how old they were. A stupa-like structure on Mohenjo-Daro perhaps gave the impression that they were more recent remains, dating to the historical period. They were certainly not protected or revered as the incredible archaeological sites they were; large parts of Harappa had been dismantled, and the mud bricks used to the line the tracks for the Lahore-Multan railway (and yes, it hurts me to even type the words).

Under Marshall and an organised Archaeological Survey in the 1920s, artefacts from the surface scatter were collected and brought to him, at which point he noticed a curious thing. Despite coming from mounds about 400 miles/644 km apart, the artefacts undoubtedly were of the same class, and one that was previously unknown before. Excavations proceeded, and Marshall realised that the height of the mounds, which were artificial, was the result of the accumulated debris of many many years of occupation. Absolutely nothing was known about the people who shared a common culture, and a common material culture, across this vast geographical area. The 'once flourishing cities' were not just fascinating to archaeologists. Marshall published the news in an English newspaper in 1924, where presumably English society, high and otherwise, had its world rocked. These were people almost obsessed with ancient civilisations; going through the issues for 1924 alone, there were 2-4 archaeological bulletins in almost every issue. No joke. Tutankhamun's tomb had been excavated only two years previously, and this was the kind of news that they just ate up. Presumably, anyone who was anyone was talking about it.

Marshall also published images of Indus seals, figurines, pottery, and jewellery. The wonderful thing about this was that the following week, a noted Assyriologist named Professor A.H. Sayce published a piece in the ILN about how the Indus seals, with animals and the Indus script, had long been found at sites such as Susa in the Near (or Middle, if you prefer) East. He wrote that 'The remarkable discoveries in the Panjab [sic] and Sind...are even more remarkable than [Marshall] supposes', and dropped the bombshell that the tablets belonged 'to the third millennium BC' and thus were not only of considerable antiquity, but also established trade between Babylon and India in that period.

A week later, two archaeologists named C.J. Gadd and Sidney Smith of the British Museum, published a third piece (still in the ILN, because why stop a good thing when it's rolling) showing similarities between the material cultures of the Indus and Babylon.

There you have it...almost unknown for millennia, and then in the space of a couple of years, and a couple of weeks, the Indus Civilisation was established in our collective consciousness as what it is today.

Image is the header for Marshall's incredible news, in the Illustrated London News, September 20th, 1924. From the British Library Newspaper Library.
Click on the thumbnail for a bigger picture.