Surplus in the Indus Civilization: Agricultural Choices, Social Relations, Political Effects

Miller, Heather M.-L.

doi:10.5876/9781607323808.c004

Cited by 12 publications

(10 citation statements)

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“…Retaining a local cropping system with regular use of a lower yielding and lower calorific crop may therefore relate not only to environment but may also reflect local identity and choices (e.g. Fuller et al 2004;Fuller 2005;Smith 2006;Miller 2015). Ethnographic work looking at the functionality of all the cereals used (e.g.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cereals, calories and change: exploring approaches to quantification in Indus archaeobotany

Bates

Petrie

2017

Archaeol Anthropol Sci

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Several major cereal groups have been identified as staples used by the pre-urban, urban and post-urban phase populations of the Indus Civilisation (3200-1500 BCE): wheat, barley, a range of small hulled millets and also rice, though their proportional exploitation is variable across space and over time. Traditional quantification methods examine the frequency, intensity and proportionality of the use of these crops and help ascertain the 'relative importance' of these cereals for Indus populations. However, this notion of 'importance' is abstracted from the daily lives of the people using these crops and may be biased by the differential production (as well as archaeological survival) of individual cereals. This paper outlines an alternative approach to quantifying Indus cereals by investigating proportions of calories. Cereals are predominantly composed of carbohydrates and therefore provided much of the daily caloric intake among many late Holocene farming populations. The four major cereal groups cultivated by Indus farmers, however, vary greatly in terms of calories per grain, and this has an impact on their proportional input to past diets. This paper demonstrates that, when converted to proportions of calories, the perceived 'importance' of cereals from five Indus sites changes dramatically, reducing the role of the previously dominant small hulled millet species and elevating the role of Triticoid grains. Although other factors will also have affected how a farmer perceived the role and importance of a crop, including its ecological tolerances, investments required to grow it, and the crop's role in the economy, this papers suggests that some consideration of what cereals meant in terms of daily lives is needed alongside the more abstracted quantification methods that have traditionally been applied.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cereals, calories and change: exploring approaches to quantification in Indus archaeobotany

Bates

Petrie

2017

Archaeol Anthropol Sci

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“…586-587;Luthra 1936), and field pea (Wheeler 1968, pp. 84-85), all of which would have been grown with the support of late summer inundation resulting from Himalayan snow-melt and monsoon rain in the regions to the northeast, complemented by winter rain (see Miller 2006Miller , 2015Petrie 2017). Thinking primarily about the areas of Baluchistan and Sindh, Fairservis (1967Fairservis ( , 1971) subsequently hypothesised that winter or rabi cultivation was the norm for the Indus region.…”

Section: Indus Subsistence and The Issue Of 'Multi-cropping'mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is important to note, however, that variation in the distribution of rainfall and thus the supply of water in general means that it was not feasible to grow all of these crops in all of the regions occupied by Indus populations (Wright 2010, p. 168;Petrie 2017;Petrie et al 2017). Miller (2006Miller ( , 2015 has suggested that in central Punjab, water supply for Indus farmers is likely to have come primarily from inundation (produced by a combination of snowmelt and run-off from the Indian Summer Monsoon) and direct rainfall, while additional water was probably obtained via small-scale irrigation or well/lift irrigation. It is likely that these water supply mechanisms were used across the Indus zone, at differing levels of intensity, depending upon local environmental and climatic conditions (Petrie 2017).…”

Section: Differentiating Indus Cropping Strategiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the Indus context, it has been argued that perennial and ephemeral water courses were exploited for flood inundation when present, and when not, the inhabitants relied on rainfall, small-scale irrigation, well/lift irrigation and also ponds to supply water (Miller 2006(Miller , 2015Petrie 2017;also Weber 1989, pp. 367-369).…”

Section: Environmental Variation and Diversity In Indus Cropping Pramentioning

confidence: 99%

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‘Multi-cropping’, Intercropping and Adaptation to Variable Environments in Indus South Asia

Petrie

Bates

2017

J World Prehist

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Past human populations are known to have managed crops in a range of ways. Various methods can be used, singly or in conjunction, to reconstruct these strategies, a process which lends itself to the exploration of socio-economic and political themes. This paper endeavours to unpack the concept of 'multi-cropping' by considering diversity and variation in the cropping practices of the populations of South Asia's Indus Civilisation. It argues that nuanced interpretations of the evidence provided by the combinations of crop seeds and weeds present in specific contexts and phases of occupation can reveal much about Indus cropping strategies, which in turn enables consideration of issues related to adaptation, intensification and resilience in the face of changing social, political, economic and environmental climates.

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“…Heterarchy in the Indus civilization co-existed with remarkable examples of coordination and standardization. In addition to Mohenjo-daro's street plans and drainage networks (Jansen 1993a), Indus agricultural production likely involved institutions that operated across kin or community boundaries (Miller 2015), and Indus craft industries coordinated activity among many different specialists (Bhan et al 1994;Kenoyer 1998;Menon 2008;Miller 2007a,b;Vidale 2000;Wright 1991;. A common system of stone weights has been recovered from many Indus sites, suggesting strong adherence to a single system (Miller 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mohenjo-Daro's Small Public Structures: Heterarchy, Collective Action and a Re-visitation of Old Interpretations with GIS and 3D Modelling

Green¹

2017

CAJ

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Together, the concepts of heterarchy and collective action offer potential explanations for how early state societies may have established high degrees of civic coordination and sophisticated craft industries in the absence of exclusionary political strategies or dominant centralized political hierarchies. The Indus civilization (c. 2600–1900 bc) appears to have been heterarchical, which raises critical questions about how its infrastructure facilitated collective action. Digital re-visitation of early excavation reports provides a powerful means of re-examining the nuances of the resulting datasets and the old interpretations offered to explain them. In an early report on excavations at Mohenjo-daro, the Indus civilization's largest city, Ernest Mackay described a pair of small non-residential structures at a major street intersection as a ‘hostel’ and ‘office’ for the ‘city fathers’. In this article, Mackay's interpretation that these structures had a public orientation is tested using a geographical information systems approach (GIS) and 3D models derived from plans and descriptions in his report. In addition to supporting aspects of Mackay's interpretation, the resulting analysis indicates that Mohenjo-daro's architecture changed through time, increasingly favouring smaller houses and public structures. Close examination of these small public structures also suggests that they may at times have been part of a single complex.

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Surplus in the Indus Civilization: Agricultural Choices, Social Relations, Political Effects

Cited by 12 publications

References 0 publications

Cereals, calories and change: exploring approaches to quantification in Indus archaeobotany

Cereals, calories and change: exploring approaches to quantification in Indus archaeobotany

‘Multi-cropping’, Intercropping and Adaptation to Variable Environments in Indus South Asia

Mohenjo-Daro's Small Public Structures: Heterarchy, Collective Action and a Re-visitation of Old Interpretations with GIS and 3D Modelling

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