Engineering Feats and Consequences in the Indus: Workers in the Night

Summary

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 arrangements that made the system work, but using modern cities as examples, optimal times to clean waste pits, flush drains, and remove unpleasant deposits would have been those few hours between the end of the night hours and dawn. In this paper, I explore the efficacy of the night, phases of the moon, and the open skies in Indus cities and the technical specialists that maintained them.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Archaeology of the Night

Keywords

Spatial Coverage