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

Summary

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 wheat, barley, millets, and rice formed the staple food resource, in our desire to model the underpinnings of urban-support systems—how the masses were fed—we have overlooked that the economy(s) and diets were more diverse and exciting than a daily dose of carbohydrates. The very first discoveries of plants in the Indus included dates, and since then a diversity of fruit remains have been found, alongside other datasets like wood, artistry, artifacts, and additional scientific data, that demonstrate that Indus systems of arboriculture enriched daily diets, complicated the economic system(s), and engaged with the mosaic environmental and cultural worlds that Indus peoples lived in. In this paper I play with notions of food, agriculture, trade, ritual, and ecological manipulation to explore how Indus peoples conceptualized trees within and without their spheres of daily life, pushing the boundaries of this oft-overlooked resource into new theoretical realms.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Entangled Legacies: Human, Forest, and Tree Dynamics   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38139.0