Indus civilization (Other Keyword)
1-6 (6 Records)
Water tanks, sump pits, street drains, toilets, sewage drains, shaft wells, bathing platforms and other waste management amenities are among the visible landmarks of the cities of the Indus civilization. While they did provide conveniences for city dwellers, there were certain inequities in the types of amenities associated with individual households, but it was in the interest of all to keep the system in working order. There is no direct evidence for the complex network and infrastructural...
From Rojdi to Harappa and Beyond: Regional Variation in the Indus Civilization (2017)
Steve Weber's pioneering research on botanical remains and environment has provided foundational studies for subsistence and settlement in the Indus civilization. Results of his field research at Harappa in the Punjab, Rojdi in Gujarat, and Farmana in Haryana focused in three key areas where major Indus centers were established. Differences in archaeobotanical remains provided a firm basis from plant remains and long-term agricultural packages in the three regions. These ranged from...
From Scatterplots to Statistics: Identifying the Local Isotope Range in Multivariate Data (2016)
In recent decades, isotopic assays of strontium, lead, and oxygen in biological remains have revolutionized archaeological migration studies by providing direct evidence for the occurrence, timing, and geographic origins of individual residence change. Such research requires the clear identification of ‘local’ isotopic baselines for comparison against assayed individuals, and yet no single method to accomplish this task has emerged as best practice. Some researchers advocate the use of commensal...
Land-Use and Social Networking of the Indus Civilization Explored with Stable Isotopes in Faunal Remains (2016)
The region of Gujarat was the southernmost extension of the Indus Civilization (2600-1900 B.C.), South Asia’s first experiment with urban society. In this region, distinctively Indus material culture was made and used at a series of small, monumentally walled manufacturing and trading centers situated along coastal trade and travel corridors that have often been interpreted as colonies established to facilitate the exploitation of the region’s rich natural resources. With the decline of Indus...
Trees among the Cereal Fields: Arboriculture Reframed as Integral to the Food and Economic Systems of the Indus Civilization of South Asia ca. 3200–1500 BC (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Entangled Legacies: Human, Forest, and Tree Dynamics" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper I synthesize a big picture of how people in the Bronze Age Indus Civilization of South Asia engaged with trees as a vital resource, and how there was no single conception of trees as “wild” versus “domesticated,” “orcharded” versus “stand-alone,” “exotic” versus “native,” and potentially “owned” versus “communal.” While...
What’s in the Menu? Harappan Culinary Practices during the Urban Phase of the Indus Age (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Farm to Table Archaeology: The Operational Chain of Food Production" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The study of ancient food residues does not only provide information on the ancient diet but also sheds light on the nature of food selection, processing, storage and finally the discard of food wastes. The presence of large quantities of animal bones, primarily from cattle/buffalo and sheep/goat in all Harappan...