Beyond Hearth and Pots: Understanding Food Processing and Pottery Functions in the Harappan Culture

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The presentation will elucidate the kind of product(s) processed inside the potteries and their potential cultural uses within select Harappan habitational sites from Western and North-Western India. The pottery samples were sourced from the habitational sites of Dholavira, Shikarpur, Bagasra, Karanpura, and Ropar. One of the notable findings of this research is the identification of C4 plant-based resources inside some of the Red-Ware cooking pots from Karanpura, marking their possible sources in multiple varieties of millets; this analytical revelation is further supported by the archaeobotanical signatures from the geographically adjacent Harappan sites within similar chronological brackets. Besides the GC-MS analysis of the residues, the application of the compound-specific isotope technique has been instrumental in gradually uncovering the possible food practices prevalent across the studied sites.

The quantitative assessment of the detected lipids and available open porosity data from selected sites has highlighted the complex relationship between pottery forms and their intended use. This ‘use-alteration’ is particularly evident in unique forms such as perforated jars, incised pottery, and conventional serving pots like goblets and dish-on-stands. Finally, the contrasting lipid preservations within different parts of the same pot have also been essential in understanding the cooking techniques likely used by ancient Harappans.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 53618