Pastoralism, climate change, and the transformation of the Indus Civilization in Gujarat: Faunal analyses and biogenic isotopes

Abstract

The Indus Civilization (2600–1900 BCE), South Asia’s first urban society, underwent a momentous social transformation towards the end of the third millennium BC, that culminated in urban decline, cessation of writing, and the dissolution of interregional connectivity. These changes roughly coincide with the 4.2 ka BP climate event, a period of global climate fluctuation manifest in northwestern South Asia as a decline in summer monsoon precipitation. The regions encompassed by the Indus Civilization, however, were ecologically and socially diverse such that both local environmental effects of these climatic fluctuations and human responses to them are expected to vary considerably from region to region. In Gujarat, increased aridity has been hypothesized to have led to increased pastoral mobility. Here we evaluate this hypothesis using faunal analyses and isotopic data in faunal tooth enamel that allow us to directly monitor livestock management, diet, and mobility at a series of three archaeological sites whose occupational sequences span this period of social and climatic change. We find no evidence for significant changes in pastoral land-use practices through time in this sequence, findings that we interpret as indicating considerable resilience on the part of local pastoral producers.