A peaceful realm? Trauma and social differentiation at Harappa

Gwen Robbins Schug,Kelsey Gray,V Mushrif-Tripathy,A.R Sankhyan

doi:10.1016/j.ijpp.2012.09.012

Abstract

Thousands of settlements stippled the third millennium B.C. landscape of Pakistan and northwest India. These communities maintained an extensive exchange network that spanned West and South Asia. They shared remarkably consistent symbolic and ideological systems despite a vast territory, including an undeciphered script, standardized weights, measures, sanitation and subsistence systems, and settlement planning. The city of Harappa (3300–1300B.C.) sits at the center of this Indus River Valley Civilization. The relatively large skeletal collection from Harappa offers an opportunity to examine biocultural aspects of urban life and its decline in South Asian prehistory. This paper compares evidence for cranial trauma among burial populations at Harappa through time to assess the hypothesis that Indus state formation occurred as a peaceful heterarchy. The prevalence and patterning of cranial injuries, combined with striking differences in mortuary treatment and demography among the three burial areas indicate interpersonal violence in Harappan society was structured along lines of gender and community membership. The results support a relationship at Harappa among urbanization, access to resources, social differentiation, and risk of interpersonal violence. Further, the results contradict the dehumanizing, unrealistic myth of the Indus Civilization as an exceptionally peaceful prehistoric urban civilization.

Highlights

At the height of the Indus Civilization, thousands of cities and towns covered a million square kilometers of territory in South Asia (Fig. 1)
Based on the evidence for violent injury at Harappa, we argue that the Harappa was not an exceptional ‘peaceful realm’
Evidence of mortuary treatment, burial practice, and violence suggest that exclusion and social differentiation existed and they suggest that the social structure partially determined the risk for violent injury in Harappan society

Summary

Introduction

At the height of the Indus Civilization (period III, 2600–1900 B.C.), thousands of cities and towns covered a million square kilometers of territory in South Asia (Fig. 1) This world was centered around the seven rivers that traverse the Indus Valley, but Indus territory extended from the Pakistan–Iran border in the West to the Ganga-Jumna doab in the East; Punjab in the North to the Rann of Kutch in the South. When bone tissue is injured, the assault is recorded in the human skeleton. Archeological records of these injuries include fractures, signs of healing, and sometimes infection in the human skeletal material. We examine the evidence for social differentiation and structured risks for violence across time, sex, and burial treatment to test this hypothesis that Harappa was an exceptionally ‘peaceful realm’ without significant social differentiation

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion