In Harappan towns and cities, there were both individual workshops operated by single individuals or families and a few larger industrial complexes (factories). These might be dispersed within the residential areas or clustered together. Some industries were also conducted in the citadels. For example, in the small town of Gola Dhoro, shellworking and faience manufacture took place in the citadel, while beadmaking was mainly undertaken in the residential area, though the raw material was stored in the citadel. In cities and some towns, specialists in a number of different crafts might work in adjacent workshops. Where the same skills or equipment were required for several different crafts, these might take place in a single workshop. Pottery firing and metalworking tended to be conducted in discrete areas, separate from other craft activities.
Much of the craft activity that took place may be undetected since regular or periodic cleaning would have removed the debris from workshops to dump areas, often at a distance. Many crafts using perishable materials, such as leatherworking, would have left no trace, except for tools whose functions are often not diagnostic. In other cases, only fixed equipment, such as a kiln, may survive to reveal the presence of craft activity in domestic workshops. In contrast, huge amounts of debris accumulated in areas of intense craft activity, making these easier to identify. Negative evidence does not preclude the presence of certain activities, although it can be suggestive; for example, the failure to detect metal smelting in the Harappan towns and cities suggests that this took place near the ore sources, though it might only reflect the siting of this activity in suburban or extramural quarters of settlements that have not been investigated.
Despite all these problems, however, intensive investigation at Mohenjo-daro and Harappa and studies of several other settlements have revealed much about Harappan craft production. Analysis of artifacts has been supplemented by technological experiments and studies of modern craft techniques, shedding much light on Harappan technology. At Mohenjo-daro, surface surveys used to map the distribution of debris from various manufacturing processes, such as sherds of misfired pottery and fragments of stone and shell, revealed a great concentration of industrial debris in the south and east of the Lower Town, especially in the Moneer area. A double row of workshops was also found to the east of the HR area. Dumps of material were found around the periphery of the
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Moneer area from the periodic cleaning out of workshops; erosion of these dumps has deposited industrial waste over a considerable area. The industries in the Moneer area included beadmaking, the manufacture of stoneware bangles, steatite working, flint knapping, faience manufacture, shellworking, weight manufacture, and copper working. Pottery making was also attested to, but this was apparently confined to the latest period of occupation. Although these areas of the city seem to have been industrial quarters, they were composed mainly of small workshops, often arranged in a row, rather than large-scale operations. There were also many small craft workshops in individual houses scattered throughout the city, particularly concerned with specialist craft activities such as making beads, seals, shell inlays, and other small precious objects, and working silver and steatite. Facilities probably for dyeing also suggest the manufacture of cotton textiles. Many of the craft activities were highly specialized. Some were concerned with a particular stage of manufacture, such as the suburban site where chank shells were cleaned. Others produced a limited range of artifacts, such as two pottery-making sites in the Moneer area where pointed-based goblets were mass-produced. The sequence of activities in a group of houses in the Moneer southeast area shows that there was no long-term correlation between a single industry and a particular location at Mohenjo-daro: A number of steatite workshops were succeeded by one larger complex manufacturing stoneware bangles, which in turn was replaced by stoneworking and finally by pottery manufacture.
At Harappa, detailed investigations of workshop areas have shown that one in the northwest of mound E was devoted throughout the life of the city to the manufacture of particular types of pottery. Crafts were practiced in various parts of mounds E and ET, their products including shell objects, agate beads, flint tools, weights, seals, metal artifacts, and pottery. Wheeler excavated a large concentration of furnaces, probably for metalworking, north of the citadel in mound F; these belonged to the city's latest occupation.
Mohenjo-daro and Harappa housed workers in a number of highly specialized crafts as well as those producing everyday objects. Some operations that have not been detected, such as brick making and other industries that produced noxious fumes or by-products, may have taken place in the unexplored suburban areas. A few special types of artifact, such as stoneware bangles (which were produced under close official control) and inscribed copper tablets, were apparently made only at Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, though the other cities may have housed a similar range of craft activities.
Some towns were manufacturing centers, though the range of artifacts they produced was more restricted. Chanhu-daro may have been an exception, producing some specialist products, such as long carnelian beads, as well as more ordinary goods. The range of craft activities for which there is evidence included copper casting, beadmaking, stone weight manufacture, bone and ivory working, shellworking, faience manufacture, and perhaps pottery production. Some of these activities took place in small workshops around the edge of mound II, others in the houses excavated on mound I, which included a beadmaking factory. Raw materials and partially worked goods were also stored together in some of the rooms. The scale of craft production at Chanhu-daro seems much greater than that at Mohenjo-daro, perhaps taking up as much as half the town, probably reflecting the difference in emphasis between the industrial town and the residential heart of the much larger city, since in the latter much craft production was probably located in the as yet unexcavated suburbs. Settlements heavily involved in trade produced large quantities of a range of goods; for example, Lothal had pottery, bead, shell, and ivory workshops, as well as copper smithies, while at Kuntasi pottery and beads were made, including some of faience, and copper and steatite were worked. In the small settlement of Allahdino, there were ovens for firing terra-cotta objects, copper was worked, and large quantities of textiles were produced.
There was also, however, a great deal of specialization in Harappan craft activities. A number of towns and industrial villages worked local materials on an industrial scale, and their products were then distributed throughout the Harappan realms. For example, Balakot near the mouth of the Indus and Nageshwar in Gujarat were centers for processing shells obtained from the nearby coastal waters. Different parts of such sites were devoted to different stages in the production cycle. Separate parts of the process may have been the responsibility of different specialists. Workshops in the cities suggest that specialization was common; for example, the pottery area in the northwest of Harappa mound E made only certain types of ceramics. On the other hand, a single workshop might undertake several related activities, such as beadmaking and seal manufacture.
CONSTRUCTION Building Materials
Clay. Bricks made of sun-dried or fired clay were the main material used in construction by the Indus people. Sun-dried bricks were used for both houses and town walls, though baked bricks were used in many of the buildings in Mohenjo-daro. Baked bricks were extensively used for constructing drains and bathroom floors; they were also used occasionally for other things such as the working platforms in mound F at Harappa and the dyeing vats at Mohenjo-daro. Bricks were generally made in two sizes: 7 by 14 by 28 centimeters for domestic structures and 10 by 20 by 40 centimeters for town walls and platforms. No brick-making sites have yet been found associated with Indus cities, but they would probably have been located in the suburbs or beyond; modern brick making takes place well away from towns and cities, but within a reasonable distance for transport. Brick making must have been a major activity in Indus times, given the volume of bricks used in urban construction. It used to be suggested that huge areas of forest had to be felled to to bake the great quantity of fired bricks used by the Harappans. However, more recent studies have shown that the scrubby natural vegetation of the Indus region would have provided perfectly adequate quantities of suitable fuel. Cow dung was probably also burned as fuel.
The techniques used in Harappan times are unlikely to have been very different from those of today. Bricks would have been made in molds, probably of wood. As well as the standard cuboid bricks, wedge-shaped bricks were made for building the numerous wells. Harappan bricks are rough on the lower face where they were in contact with the ground during drying and striated on the upper face where they were leveled with a piece of wood. After the bricks had set, the molds would be removed and the bricks left to dry. Mud bricks were now ready for use; those to be baked were stacked over a hearth, covered with fuel and fired. The stack would burn for days, sending off foul fumes. Since the only surviving trace would be the hearth, brickyards are likely to be hard to detect archaeologically.
Bricks were used occasionally to pave floors, for example in the pillared hall on the Mohenjo-daro citadel, or some streets, as in the citadel at Lothal. Clay was also made into terra-cotta drain pipes, triangular terra-cotta cakes, and overfired nodules. The cakes were used in some cases instead of bricks for paving in bathrooms or courtyards and were also employed as baffles to retain the heat in kilns and fireplaces. They have often been found in fire altars. Subspherical nodules of overfired greenish clay were used in construction, usually as a foundation layer under brick floors but also in masonry; these provided insulation and drainage.
Stone. Massive limestone rings found in the early excavations at Mohenjo-daro and Harappa remained a puzzle until the 1990s when they were uncovered in situ in the citadel gateway at Dholavira. Those with a large central hole were the base for wooden pillars, as were reel-shaped examples, while others, flattened spheres with a narrow central hole, were used to build stone columns, held together by a central wooden pole. Pillars of polished stone were also uncovered at Dholavira in and near the citadel. These monumental pillar bases and pillars may have had a religious significance as well as an architectural function.
Stone was occasionally used in houses, for example to floor a bathroom or as an elaborate version of wooden window grilles. Drain covers might be made of stone slabs. In Gujarat, however, stone was much more commonly used in construction, particularly of city and town walls. Often houses there had foundations and sometimes walls of stone rubble or dressed stone. At Dholavira, the bunds around the reservoirs were faced with stone, which was extensively used in the citadel, and in the nearby cemetery some grave pits were lined with stones.
Wood. Wood was also extensively used in architecture, though few traces have survived. Fragments of deodar, teak, and sissoo at Mohenjo-daro, Kalibangan, and Lothal show that wood was used for roof beams and rafters, doors and their jambs, and pillars. A few house models show that some Harappan houses had windows with a lattice grille and shutters, probably of wood in most cases. Wooden beams and timbers were also used to construct a number of large buildings, such as the so-called granaries at Mohenjo-daro, Harappa, and
Lothal. The complex in the southern part of the citadel at Mohenjo-daro included a large pillared hall and two smaller ones, all of which had originally had wooden pillars supporting their roofs.
Plaster and Mortar. Various materials were used for wall plaster, including clay. Early-third-millennium evidence from a failed bonfire firing of pottery at Mehrgarh shows that limestone cobbles were packed in beside the pottery and included in the firing, converting them to quicklime, which was then ground to powder on querns. It is probable that this practice continued in Harappan times. Lime was mixed with burned shell for use in plaster. Lime was also mixed with sand and water to make mortar, though mud mortar was more common. Cattle dung mixed with mud was applied as daub to the wattle walls of village huts; dung and mud or mud alone were also used to cover floors.
Construction Methods
Baked or mud bricks were often laid in what is known as English bond masonry, with alternating courses of headers and stretchers, an extremely strong construction method. Less commonly, Flemish bond masonry was employed, in which headers and stretchers alternate within each course. Masses of bricks were used, house walls at Mohenjo-daro being generally three to four bricks thick, while those at the smaller settlement of Banawali were two to four bricks thick.
Timber was used both for fixtures such as door and window frames and thresholds, and for ceilings and roof supports. Impressions of reed matting survive from the flat roofs, and thatch, packed earth, and wooden planks were probably also used in roofing. Wooden pillars were used in some buildings, to support internal balconies or external verandas; for example, the potter's workshop at Nausharo had a veranda whose posts were wedged in place with stones.
Many rooms had beaten earth floors, often covered with plaster or a thin layer of sand. However, bathroom floors were generally constructed of closely fitted sawn bricks, ground to ensure a close watertight fit. Courtyards at Mohenjo-daro were also often paved with bricks. Occasionally potsherds or tiles were used to cover a floor, and these might be decorated. At Lothal, floors were often paved with mud bricks.
City and town walls were constructed in a variety of ways. Frequently they had a mud or mud brick core enclosed in baked brick revetment walls. In Gujarat, the facing was more usually of rough or dressed stone. They were always extremely thick, ranging from around 4 meters at Surkotada to 14 meters at the base of the wall around the citadel at Harappa. Often their thickness was increased when further revetment layers were added during the history of the settlement.
The sophistication of Harappan construction techniques is visible in the Great Bath at Mohenjo-daro. This had a baked brick outer shell and inner wall, with mud brick packing between them. A thick layer of bitumen was spread as a seal on the inside, and within this the bath was constructed of closely fitted bricks placed on edge, the gaps between them filled with gypsum plaster.
A type of surveying instrument was found at Lothal, Mohenjo-daro, Banawali, and Pabumath. The example from Lothal was a hollow shell cylinder with four slits on each of its two edges. This could be used to determine alignments and lay out lines of buildings or streets at right angles. The one from Banawali was made from an animal vertebra and had two slits crossing at right angles.
Decoration
Although the brick buildings of Indus towns and cities now seem austere, it is probable that in Harappan times a variety of decorations made them far more attractive. Brick walls were generally plastered; for example, at Dholavira in the phases preceding the earthquake, both the city wall and the walls and floors of houses were covered with white and pink-red plaster. Walls may also have been decorated with textiles or other hangings. Some door frames had holes at the top from which curtains or matting may have been hung. The wooden structural elements and fixtures, such as door and window frames, may have been carved with designs that might invoke divine protection and ensure good fortune, as well as being decorative. House models show that some windows and internal partitions had intricately carved latticework grilles; a few examples made of alabaster and marble survive from Harappa and Mohenjo-daro.
World History
