Invisible Value: Steatite in the Faience Complexes of the Indus Valley Tradition

Summary

Faience (composition, frit or siliceous paste) was widespread, special, and yet everyday across much of Eurasia for well over a millennium, yet hardly known today. These materials were made with many different recipes and production methods, but there is an unusual, apparently unique, variation in faience composition for some objects in the Indus. Some siliceous paste objects include steatite fragments, invisible on the surface and requiring laboratory analysis for detection. These could be production additions for strength or similar purposes, or they could relate to a different kind of materiality, either for religious meaning, as in some modern uses, or a symbol of Indus identity/unity, as in other uses of steatite during the Indus period. Or all of these could be part of the value of steatite fragments, an important option to consider beyond the usual oppositional approach to production and use answers for material choices.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Unraveling Social Dynamics through Archaeological Science

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 13247