For millennia pastoralists had played an important role in the movement of goods and materials throughout the regions bordering the Iranian plateau. One of the key factors in the emergence of the Indus civilization was the development of water transport, allowing goods to be moved over long distances in bulk and with relatively little labor input. Combined with pastoralist and hunter-gatherer carriers and short-distance transport in carts, water transport gave the Harappans a highly efficient internal distribution network and access to materials and goods from external sources.
A high degree of bureaucratic control is implied by the organization of craft production, with large quantities of goods being produced in stages in a series of different centers; by the efficient procurement of large quantities of raw materials (and probably Mesopotamian manufactured goods) from external sources; and by the distribution of these products throughout the civilization. Raw materials and manufactured goods were not the only commodities being distributed. For example, many bones of marine fish at Harappa show that dried fish from the coast were transported to the opposite end of the Indus realms in considerable quantities. Conversely, grain may have been transported from the plains to Gujarat, which may not have been agriculturally selfsufficient, a situation that was altered by the introduction of kharif crops in the early second millennium.
It is probable that the Harappan state had a number of officials, including traders organizing external procurement, overseers supervising craft production, and administrators organizing the collection, shipment or carriage, and redistribution of goods and materials. This was the context in which seals and sealings were used, providing a means of communicating authority in face-to-face situations, and long-range instructions on handling and destination. Seals are known to have been made at Mohenjo-daro, Harappa, and Chanhu-daro; their production was probably restricted to cities and major towns that were nodes in the administrative network. At Lothal, for example, there is no sign of the debris from seal making.
A major feature of the Harappan distribution network is that it did not involve the accumulation of large quantities of grain, raw materials, and manufactured goods in state stores. Storage facilities are known, such as the warehouse at Lothal and the bins and jars at Kuntasi and Gola Dhoro, and less certainly the Granary at Mohenjo-daro, but these are relatively small. This suggests that storage was temporary, providing a place where goods and materials could be kept and probably guarded while in transit between producer and consumer or between legs of their journey, for example, between water and land transport. This argues for an efficient and rapid turnover of goods and materials, one that involved a constant traffic in small quantities of commodities rather than bulk movement at certain times of year. If the state was financed by taxes of some kind, these must have been collected regularly in small quantities and quickly disbursed: This would fit the evidence of guard posts at city gates, which have been interpreted as collection points for tolls or customs' dues.
Some goods and materials would have been carried over long distances as intact packages, for example, being transported from the ports of the Makran to the towns of the Kachi plain by pastoralists moving to the summer pastures of the Baluchi uplands, then by others moving down to the Kachi plain in winter. The massive unexcavated site of Pathani Damb at the foot of the Mula pass may have been a city or at least a major town that was the gateway back into the Harappan realms at the terminus of this transport route. Generally, however, the consignments of goods and materials are likely to have been transported over short distances between nodes in the distribution network, where they were opened, sorted, and repackaged into different consignments for onward transmission to various destinations. At these nodes materials could also be distributed to artisans to be manufactured into blanks or finished goods, which would be collected and either distributed locally or packaged and sent on. The large quantity of copper tools found at Allahdino may reflect its functioning as such a collection, transit, and distribution node. Similarly, pieces of several types of jasper were brought to Gola Dhoro from Saurashtra 70 kilometers to the southwest: While the mottled variety was worked into beads there, the variegated jasper was not used at Gola Dhoro but rather stored for onward distribution.
World History
