Some communications within the Indus-Saraswati region were over land, using bullock carts for short journeys and the animals of pastoral nomads as beasts of burden over longer distances. Bulky goods, however, were more easily transported by water, along the rivers and around the coasts. Many of the raw materials needed by the Indus people could be obtained in the regions controlled by the Indus civilization: flint from the Rohri Hills, carnelian and agate from southern Gujarat, gold dust from the upper reaches of the rivers, timber from the Punjab and Gujarat, and clays from most areas, while textiles could be made from the cotton grown by the farmers, possibly wool from the pastoral-ists' sheep, and probably the hair from their goats, as well as leather. Other materials were obtained from the inhabitants of neighboring regions: copper and possibly tin ores from the Jodhpura-Ganeshwar culture of the Aravalli Hills; ivory, honey, and other forest products from the hunter-gatherers who ranged through the arid areas to the south of the Indus-Saraswati region; and probably other materials from settled neighbors such as the Kayatha culture.
In the early third millennium, the inhabitants of the Indus region had participated in the trading networks that operated across the Iranian plateau. With the emergence of the Indus civilization, however, came a major change. Seagoing boats were now constructed and Indus merchants sailed through the Gulf to trade directly with the inhabitants of Oman and eventually with Bahrain and the cities of southern Mesopotamia. While there is little evidence of the ships themselves and nothing is known of their antecedents, the fact that Indus merchants are known to have traveled to Mesopotamia, while Mesopotamian ships did not venture outside the confines of the Gulf, suggests that the development of seaworthy vessels was an Indus innovation.
The Indus people also established a trading outpost at Shortugai in Afghanistan, allowing them to monopolize the supply of lapis lazuli to Mesopotamia. Many settlements in this region and in northern Iran have yielded Indus material. But while the Mesopotamian texts attest to the importation of a range of Indus raw materials, and Indus beads are well known from Mesopotamian excavations, it is difficult to establish just what the Indus people obtained in exchange.
Neighbors to the West
Late Kot Diji. The northern parts of the Indo-Iranian borderlands, the Gomal Valley, with the towns of Rehman Dheri and Gumla, and the Bannu Basin, with settlements such as Taraqai Qila and Lewan, were not incorporated into the Indus realms. Here a late version of the Kot Diji material was in use and Mature Harappan pottery was absent, although there were other types of Indus artifacts, such as toy carts, beads, and, most significantly, weights. Some interaction must therefore have occurred between the Indus civilization and the inhabitants of these regions, presumably for trade. The same may be true of Sarai Khola in the Taxila Valley.
Helmand Culture. During the transitional phase of Harappan development, the Kandahar Valley, with its large town of Mundigak, had become incorporated into the flourishing culture of the Helmand Basin (Seistan), which by this time may have been a state. Helmand's city at Shahr-i Sokhta grew to around 150 hectares by 2400 BCE, including a cemetery, separate from the rest of the city, which covered 21 hectares. Mundigak became the state's second center, dominating the eastern part of state; it grew to around 60 hectares in size.
Craft production was now concentrated in a substantial artisans' quarter of around 30-40 hectares in the west and south of Shahr-i Sokhta. Here many materials were worked including copper, alabaster, chlorite, flint, and marine shell. Pottery, thrown on the fast wheel and generally undecorated, was made on an industrial scale in factory workshops, associated with fifty to a hundred kilns. Metal was also worked on an industrial scale. In contrast, other crafts were undertaken in small workshops of one or two rooms. High-value imported materials such as turquoise were made into jewelry in different workshops from those working local materials. Shahr-i Sokhta continued to play an important part in international trade, having links with Turkmenia to its north and Oman to its south, but the earlier connections between this region and the Indus valley were apparently severed.
Monumental buildings were constructed on high mounds of mud brick masonry in both cities, the House of the Foundations in the Eastern Residential quarter and the large enclosure building in the Central Quarters at Shahr-i Sokhta, and at Mundigak the "temple" and the "palace," whose terraced summit had a fagade of mud brick pillars surmounted by a brick frieze. Mud brick was generally used in the architecture of the two sites, though the Mundigak temple had limestone foundations. Domestic architecture was also in mud brick: many substantial houses had six or eight rooms. The many compart-mented seals found at Shahr-i Sokhta seem to have been used principally to stamp sealings used to "lock" doors.
Kulli. In contrast to the Helmand culture, which had little evidence of links with the Indus region, the Kulli culture in southern Baluchistan was closely integrated with the Harappan civilization. Kulli pottery shared many forms with the Harappan repertoire but also included distinctive shapes such as canisters and maintained the earlier tradition of painted zoomorphic decoration. The designs now included wide-eyed elongated animals, especially zebus, as well as fish, bird, and plant motifs such as pipal leaves. The Kulli people also made distinctive human and animal figurines, particularly bulls with painted decoration. Some imported Indus material was present, including model carts. Finds of an Indus weight at Mehi and Indus seals at Nindowari underline the close degree of interaction between the Indus civilization and the Kulli culture.
Several of the major Kulli sites had substantial architecture. At Nindowari, a terraced series of platforms led up to a monumental platform at the summit with a drain in it. Similar structures were built at Edith Shahr. A number of the larger settlements were fortified. Unlike the Indus settlements, the architecture in this region was of stone walls and stone-flagged floors, reflecting the locally available building material, though boulders used at Kulli itself were brought there from 3 kilometers away. Curiously, some of the rooms had their doorways in the corner, a structurally unsound arrangement. Nindowari and Kulli had structures that may have been granaries. In one room at Nindowari, 173 animal and 28 human figurines were found: This was perhaps a shrine.
A staircase at Kariya Buthi, a Kulli settlement on the Hab River. Kulli towns were often built on elevated and terraced ground; staircases gave access to the higher areas of the settlement. The Kulli culture played an important role in Harappan trade. (Ute Franke-Vogt)
Generally the settlements of the Kulli culture were located to take advantage of the limited available agricultural land, which was cultivated using various types of irrigation works such as dams and gabarbands. Dates and fish were of considerable importance, but pastoralism was probably the main way of life. Kulli settlements were also well placed with respect to the routes traversing this terrain, linking the coast with the highlands and the Kachi and Indus plains. Some were also located near sources of minerals such as copper ore. It is possible that the Kulli people supplied the Harappans with raw materials and were carriers for Harappan trade during their seasonal pastoral movements.
While the Kulli material is characteristic of the inland areas of southern Baluchistan, the classic Mature Harappan culture was spread along the coastal region where a number of important sites were established, notably Sutkagen-dor, the most westerly Indus town, which may have been a fortified outpost controlling or guarding coastal traffic, since it had strong walls with towers and a fortified gateway. It is likely that these sites were established as outposts related to the Harappans' Gulf sea trade.
Neighbors to the South
Jodhpura-Ganeshwar. The Harappans obtained some and probably a significant proportion of the copper ore they used from the Khetri region of the Aravalli hills, south of Cholistan. This region was occupied by a culture named after two of its settlements: Jodhpura and Ganeshwar. The people of the Jodhpura-Ganeshwar culture were in the main hunters, gatherers, and fishers, but they also exploited local copper ore. Other metal ores available in the Aravallis and the adjacent Tosham region included lead, zinc, and tin, and it is possible that the tin was also exploited, although there is no evidence of this. Evidence of copper mining and smelting in this region goes back as far as the late fourth millennium, and by the Early Harappan period the Jodhpura-Ganeshwar people were manufacturing large quantities of small copper objects, which they traded with neighboring groups. As in the Early Harappan period, the Jodhpura-Ganeshwar red pottery shows signs of Harappan influence.
Ahar-Banas. The Ahar-Banas culture continued in the area to the southwest of the Jodhpura-Ganeshwar culture, with whom they were in communication. Limited, and possibly indirect, contact with the Harappans is shown by the presence at Ahar of six Indus beads, one of lapis lazuli and five of carnelian. The Ahar-Banas people lived in settlements, such as Ahar, Balathal, and Gilund, made up of substantial rectangular houses of stone, wattle and daub, and mud brick, with flat thatched or earth-covered roofs; at Balathal, stone was quarried locally to build house foundations. Larger houses were divided into several rooms and often there was a kitchen area with a built hearth (chu-lah) and a saddle quern. The Ahar-Banas people practiced farming, growing millets, wheat, barley, and pulses; raising cattle and other animals; and exploiting local wild resources such as deer, peafowl, fish, and snails. The importance of cattle is reflected in their production of cattle figurines.
Kayatha. Other farming settlements appeared during the later third millennium farther to the south, in Madhya Pradesh, east of Gujarat and north of the Narmada River. These belonged to the Kayatha culture, best-known from the settlement at Kayatha. People here made microliths and blades of chalcedony and also used copper axes, bangles, and other objects, either locally made or obtained from the Jodhpura-Ganeshwar culture. They made various styles of plain and painted pottery, possibly inspired by Harappan pottery. Caches of carnelian, agate, and steatite beads probably reflect contacts with the Harappans in Gujarat to the west, perhaps related to the exploitation of local carnelian and agate sources. After 2100 BCE, some of the pottery styles present there, such as white-painted Black-and-Red ware, indicate contacts with the Ahar-Banas culture. Terra-cotta figurines of bulls are also known at Kayatha from this period.
Hunter-Gatherers. Bagor in Rajathan had been occupied for several millennia by hunter-gatherers who also herded domestic sheep, goats, and cattle. After 2800 BCE they began making pottery, which had some similarities to the ceramics of their neighbors, the Ahar-Banas and Kayatha cultures, though the Bagor pots were of much poorer quality. Two arrowheads, a ribbed spearhead, and an awl, all of copper, and a necklace of beads, including some of banded agate and carnelian, are known from a burial of this period. The arrowheads were probably made by the Jodhpura-Ganeshwar culture but may have reached the inhabitants of Bagor through trade with the Harappans in Gujarat, perhaps along with the beads, in exchange for the kind of goods to which hunter-gatherers had access, such as game and ivory. Similar evidence comes from Langnaj, a hunter-gatherer settlement in northern Gujarat, where a copper knife and dentalium beads suggest contacts with the Harappans.
Southern Neolithic. Recently discovered evidence from Karnataka in South India indicates that there were settled communities in this region by the early third millennium, occupying cleared and leveled sites on granite hills, where they constructed round huts of timber posts, wattle, and daub. They also constructed large wooden stockades (ash mounds) on open ground, where they penned locally domesticated cattle, periodically setting fire to the pens to destroy the dung, perhaps to prevent disease. The central importance of cattle is reflected in the large numbers of terra-cotta figurines of cattle and the depictions of cattle in the rock art of the region, which is mainly Neolithic in date. These people began to cultivate local food plants, including several varieties of millet and pulse, as well as growing or gathering tubers; through time, the latter declined in importance in favor of millets. They made poorly fired gray pottery and stone tools, including many ground stone axes. Some of the settlements were in the important gold-bearing regions, suggesting that local gold may have been utilized at this time. If so, it is possible that gold from this region eventually reached the Indus civilization.
Mysteries of the Indus State
A prominent feature of most civilizations is evidence of the ruling elite: palatial residences, rich burials, unique luxury products, and propaganda such as monumental inscriptions and portrait statuary or reliefs. Strikingly, these are all absent from the Indus civilization. This poses the questions of how the Indus state was organized politically, whether there were rulers, and, if so, why they are archaeologically invisible. Another striking contrast between the Indus and other ancient civilizations is the apparent absence from the Indus civilization of any evidence of conflict. Though the cities were surrounded by massive walls, these seem to have been defenses against flooding rather than against hostile people, as well as barriers to control the flow of people and goods, and they were probably designed also to impress. Weapons are absent, as are signs of violent destruction during the civilization's heyday. An entirely peaceful state seems anomalous in the history of world civilization.
Writing is another characteristic feature of civilizations. The Harappans used inscribed seals, and a small range of other objects also bear signs from their script. The paucity of these inscribed materials and the brevity of the inscriptions means that the script has not been deciphered: neither the meaning of the signs nor the language they convey can yet be worked out. It is generally assumed that a greater range of Harappan texts existed on perishable materials, such as palm leaves, and that these included the records used by the Harappan authorities in the running of the state. However, a recent suggestion that no such records had once existed and that the Harappan signs do not actually constitute a script raises further intriguing questions about how the Indus state could have functioned.
World History
