![]() Questioning StereotypesUpinder Singh HARAPPAN ARCHAEOLOGY: EARLY STATE PERSPECTIVES By Shereen Ratnagar 2016, Rs. 2195.00 VOLUME XL NUMBER 10 October 2016 An enormous amount of scholarly writing exists on the Harappan civilization.
Shereen Ratnagar herself has produced a number of important books on the
subject. So why another one? For one thing, the information on South Asia’s
oldest civilization continues to grow steadily, and new evidence requires
rethinking. Further, as Ratnagar tells us in the
Preface, it is time ‘to put the pieces together and to conceive of the entirety
of Harappan archaeological remains in terms of a mode of cultural organization,
a kind of society, and a set of economic patterns, thereby putting some flesh
on the bones.’ Ratnagar’s is not a routine overview. Apart from rich empirical
detail, a lively critical perspective runs through the book, one which reflects
on archaeological method and interpretation in order to question several
hypotheses and stereotypes, not only about the Harappan civilization, but also
about the larger Indian past.
The first part of the book focuses on the backbone of the
civilization—agriculture and water. There is a detailed discussion of the
‘dynamic landscape,’ drawing on studies that have detailed shifting river
courses and coastlines. But Ratnagar argues that there has been too much focus
on riverine floods and rainfall in discussions of Harappan agriculture, and
that ground water resources were much more important. She also looks at
subsistence activities based on animals and marine life, and extends her
discussion to the symbolic and religious spheres, for instance in an excursus
on the buffalo and the ‘horned deity’ on the so-called Pashupati seal.
Although there is a great deal of discussion of
historiography in the book, its second section has an especially strong focus
on this. In Chapter 2, the author gives an overview of the discovery of the
civilization and the changing presuppositions, interpretations and conclusions
about its origins and nature. This includes discussing the well-recognized
regional variations as well as the disparities in the regional profiles. For
instance, the Saurashtra and Kutch sites are much better understood than the
sites in the Sutlej-Yamuna divide. The close relationship between the Early and
Mature Harappan phases has been acknowledged for many decades, especially after
Rafique Mughal’s work on Cholistan. But Ratnagar disagrees with the ‘gradualist
paradigm’ and asserts that there must have been a radical socio-economic
transformation that took place at the cusp of the two phases. She also
questions the usefulness of the ‘Late Harappan’ label, pointing out that too
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