Jonathan Mark Kenoyer

Contemporary stone beadmaking in Khambhat, India: Patterns of craft specialization and organization of production as reflected in the archaeological record

Abstract Archaeologists studying early urban societies have long used the concept of craft specialization as an important indicator of social stratification, centralized control of production and indirectly, state level organization. However, new interpretive models need to be developed in order to understand socio‐economic developments in the prehistoric period. The stone beadmaking industry of Khambhat, India, provides a modern example of a traditional specialized craft that is practised by different communities within a highly stratified society. Furthermore, there is a considerable degree of centralized control in production and various levels of state control are present. Preliminary results of the ethnoarchaeological and experimental studies of the stone bead industry in Khambhat are used to examine the concept of craft specialization and to suggest new ways of applying this concept to prehistoric studies.

The Indus Valley Tradition of Pakistan and western India

Over the last several decades new sets of information have provided a more detailed understanding of the rise and character of the Indus Civilization as well as its decline and decentralization. This article begins with a summary of the major historical developments in the archaeology of the Indus Valley Tradition and a definition of terms found in the literature. A general discussion of the environmental setting and certain preconditions for the rise of urban and state-level society is followed by a summary of the major aspects of the Harappan Phase of the Indus Valley Tradition. This summary includes discussions of settlement patterns, subsistence, architecture, trade and exchange, specialized crafts, language, religion, and social organization. The Localization Era or decentralization of the urban centers is also addressed.

Trade and technology of the Indus Valley : new insights from Harappa, Pakistan

This paper presents selected results of current research on specialized crafts at the early urban center of Harappa, Pakistan. Many crafts such as shell working, ceramics, and agate and glazed steatite bead making are represented from the earliest levels of the site (c. 3300 BC) and continue up until the final phase of prehistoric occupation (c. 1700 BC). Materials analysis and sourcing, microscopic studies of manufacturing waste and finished objects, experimental replication, and ethnoarchaeological studies have been used to investigate the trade of raw materials and finished objects, as well as the development of technological innovations. Some of these crafts are still practiced in the subcontinent today, and by using more precise methods of analysis and documentation it will be possible to follow the continuities and change of some crafts for over 5,000 years.

Evidence for Patterns of Selective Urban Migration in the Greater Indus Valley (2600- 1900 BC): A Lead and Strontium Isotope Mortuary Analysis

Just as modern nation-states struggle to manage the cultural and economic impacts of migration, ancient civilizations dealt with similar external pressures and set policies to regulate people’s movements. In one of the earliest urban societies, the Indus Civilization, mechanisms linking city populations to hinterland groups remain enigmatic in the absence of written documents. However, isotopic data from human tooth enamel associated with Harappa Phase (2600-1900 BC) cemetery burials at Harappa (Pakistan) and Farmana (India) provide individual biogeochemical life histories of migration. Strontium and lead isotope ratios allow us to reinterpret the Indus tradition of cemetery inhumation as part of a specific and highly regulated institution of migration. Intra-individual isotopic shifts are consistent with immigration from resource-rich hinterlands during childhood. Furthermore, mortuary populations formed over hundreds of years and composed almost entirely of first-generation immigrants suggest that inhumation was the final step in a process linking certain urban Indus communities to diverse hinterland groups. Additional multi disciplinary analyses are warranted to confirm inferred patterns of Indus mobility, but the available isotopic data suggest that efforts to classify and regulate human movement in the ancient Indus region likely helped structure socioeconomic integration across an ethnically diverse landscape.

An upper palaeolithic shrine in India

There is little doubt that a religious belief imparting a sense of law and order and helping to control the relationships between human populations and the other components of their environment, is highly developed among present-day hunter/gatherers. Such beliefs not only help to provide a feeling of unity stretching far beyond the hunting band itself, but they afford an ordered interconnexion between the foragers and the spiritual processes which are looked upon as all-powerful forces influencing life and death (Turnbull, 1968, 25). This is well exemplified in the case of the Musahar, a Dravidian tribe of hunter/gatherers who inhabit the jungle regions of the Eastern Vindhyas in Central India. According to Nesfield, quoted by Crooke (1896, Vol. IV:34), ‘The great active power in the universe … is Bansapatti, Bansatti or Bansuri, the goddess who … personifies and presides over the forests. By her command the trees bear fruit, the bulbs grow in the earth, the bees make honey, the tussar worm fattens on the asân leaf, and lizards, wolves and jackals (useful food to man) multiply their kind. She is a goddess of childbirth. To her the childless wife makes prayers for the grant of offspring. In her name and by her aid the medicine man or sorcerer expels devils from the bodies of the possessed. In her name and to her honour the village man kindles a new fire for lighting a brick kiln. Woe to the man who takes a false oath in the name of Bansatti.’

Nondestructive Analysis of Dragonfly Eye Beads from the Warring States Period, Excavated from a Chu Tomb at the Shenmingpu Site, Henan Province, China

Dragonfly eye beads are considered to be the earliest types of glass objects in China, and in the past have been considered as evidence of culture interaction or trade between West and East Asia. In this article, synchrotron radiation microcomputed tomography and μ-probe energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence were used to determine the chemical composition, microstructure, and manufacturing technology of four dragonfly eye beads, excavated from a Chu tomb at the Shenmingpu site, Henan Province, China, dated stylistically to the Middle and Late Warring State Period (475 BC-221 BC). First, a nondestructive method was used to differentiate the material types including faience (glazed quartz), frit, glazed pottery (clay ceramic), and glass. Three beads were identified as faience and one bead as glazed pottery. The glaze recipe includes quartz, saltpeter, plant ash, and various copper, and is classified as belonging to the K2O-CaO-SiO2 glass system, which indicates that these beads were not imported from the West. Based on computed tomography slices, the manufacturing technology of the faience eye beads appears to include the use of an inner core, molding technology, and the direct application glazing method. These manufacturing features are consistent with the techniques used in China during this same time period for bronze mold-casting, proto-porcelain, and glass.

Investigation of ancient Harappan faience through LA-ICP-AES and SR-μ CT

Faience (glazed quartz) production is one of the complex craft techniques used by artisans to create high-status goods for elite consumers during the Harappan Phase, 2600–1900 BC. In this study, some faience objects selected from Harappa site, Pakistan were analyzed by LA-ICP-AES and SR-μ CT. The results suggested that these faience objects can be divided into two groups by using different flux: sajji-khar (a kind of plant ash) and mixed alkali flux; copper and iron were used as coloring elements in the blue and red faience; the forming technology of two groups of faience was similar:these beads were firstly formed on an organic cylinder and then glazed by using the efflorescence technique according to replica experiments and the structural information revealed by SR-μ CT slices. Up to our knowledge, the results firstly and scientifically confirm that the production of the Harappan faience beads adopts the efflorescence glazing method. The research has increased the understanding about production technology of ancient Indus faience.

ASIA, SOUTH | Indus Civilization

The Indus civilization is the first urban society to emerge in northwestern South Asia, between 2600–1900 BC. This article provides an overview of the important features of this civilization including its geographical and climatic context, subsistence and crafts, settlement and city planning, trade and economy, its undeciphered writing system, as well as socio-political and ideological organization.