Indus Civilization
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Indus Civilization Paolo Biagi1 and Elisabetta Starnini2 1 Department of Asian and North African Studies (DSAAM), Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Venezia, Italy 2 Department of Civilizations and Forms of Knowledge (DCFS), University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy
Introduction The Indus Civilization, otherwise called Harappan or Indus-Sarasvati (Gupta 1996), is one of the world’s earliest urban civilizations that flourished during the entire third millennium cal BC in a few regions of South Asia. Its distribution area covers part of present-day Pakistan, broadly corresponding to the Great Indus Valley, the Gujarat, north-western India, and part of Afghanistan. Archaeologists and philologists have identified this territory with the country called Meluhha in the ancient Mesopotamian texts (Possehl 1996). Besides impressive urban centers, the Indus Civilization is characterized by a developed agricultural system based on irrigation, a highly specialized handicraft activity, including the production of luxury items, and the transoceanic maritime trade of various goods. Moreover, its standardized weighting and measure systems followed both binary and decimal arrangements. Last, but not least, another © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Smith (ed.), Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51726-1_3491-1
hallmark of this civilization is its still undeciphered “script.” The Indus Civilization has been considered for long a sort of poorer relative of those that developed in Mesopotamia and the Nile Valley, which started to flourish ca 1000 years before. Moreover, since it has not left behind either a richly decorated monumental architecture comparable to the pyramids, temples, and royal palaces, or largesized sculptures, or products of great artistic value, it is not surprising that until recently it did not attract that much attention or was considered by archaeologists simply a later derivation of ancient Mesopotamian influence. At present, the Indus Civilization is considered to represent quite an independent phenomenon whose development was very little influenced by any other culture. Furthermore, this civilization is of major interest for the study of the origin of complex human societies, since apparently it led to a distribution of wealth in a way much more equitable than those of other more or less contemporary Bronze Age civilizations. The so-called Indus Age has been subdivided in seven stages of development, ranging from ca 7000 to ca 600 cal BC (Possehl 2002: 29, Table 2.2). Actually, only three of them, called by most authors Early Indus (3200–2600 cal BC), Transitional (2600–2500 cal BC), and Mature Indus (2500–1900 cal BC), correspond to periods of development of the Indus Civilization. Its apex is thought to have occurred around 2600–1900 cal BC, when it spread over a territory
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Indus Civilization
of ca 800,000 square km. During this period the urban centers multiplied, metropolises flourished, and at least 1000 settlements were inhabited by ca 1 million people (see Parpola 2012).
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