Blast From The Past

More than 100 seals unearthed from a 4,000-year-old bin in 
southern Rajasthan threatens to rewrite post-Indus Civilisation, reports Biplab Das 

A team of archaeologists from the University of Pennsylvania Museum and Deccan College, Pune, has unearthed a 4,000-year-old bin filled with seal impressions in the ancient town of Gilund in southern Rajasthan. The makers of the bin and seals lived between 2100-1700 BC and belonged to a community which developed the little known Ahar-Banas culture. 

During excavation, the team found more than 100 seal impressions which, according to Dr. Gregory Possehl, UPM curator and excavation codirector, "offer an insight into a culture that was non-literate, late and post-Indus Civilisation-era culture." Dr. Vasant Shinde of Deccan College has supported Possehl's contention. 

The team's excavation at Gilund began in 1999. Possehl and his colleagues' aim was to study the social life, history and agricultural developments of the people of Gilund who thrived at a time when the Indus Civilisation was in its heyday. The bin was found in a large building which had long narrow rooms with parallel walls made of sun-dried brick. The walls were between 30-49 inches thick. Alongside the bin, pits and living debris indicated that the rooms were used for storage just like a modern warehouse. 

"We are yet to figure out the exact nature of the commodities that might have been stored in the excavated building," Possehl said. "Agricultural or animal products, possibly valuable processed items like ghee, oil and textiles, seem likely candidates." 

From impressions, it can be guessed that the seals were elaborately decorated with symbols. With the help of these seals, any specific container might have been marked with symbol indicating a person who owned the container. Such signature of ownership reveals that only elite citizens had access to seals, which they used as signs of their elevated status. Furthermore, they used seal impressions to mark their commodities stored in the excavated building. 

It transpires that a class system existed among the Gilund people. The bin found was about five feet deep and 2.5 feet diameter at midpoint. Gilund's elite perhaps used the bin to keep the seal impressions in the hope of stopping possible duplication by others. 

According to Possehl, impression designs revealed that the Gilund people had trade and cultural ties with the outside world. Seal impressions were made from original seals, which were round and rectilinear. The seals' design motifs closely resembled those found at Indus Civilisation sites such as Chanhu-daro, Pirak, Kot Diji and Nindowari, 400 to 500 miles away. 

The archaeologists were stunned to find that Gilund seals' designs closely matched the designs of seals from the Batricia-Margiana Archaeological Complex, a culture that flourished in central Asia and northern Afghanistan 1,000 miles north-west of Gilund. 

"Gilund is providing us with good evidence of a stratified society that had wide-ranging contacts between the peoples of western India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and central Asia just at the end of the third millennium and the beginning of the second millennium," said Possehl. "For years, archaeologists have known that the BMAC peoples were in Sindh and Baluchistan, as well as Iran, even as far south as the Arabian Gulf." But the findings at Gilund rewrite that history. It is now clear that BMAC people travelled as far as Rajasthan and developed cross-cultural relationship with Gilund people. 

This cross-fertilisation of different cultures gave rise to a transformation. That transformation, Possehl notes, eventually led to the abandonment of the great Indus cities. These cities had lost much of their technological virtuosity, system of writing and measurements. Further, Possehl adds, "learning more about how cultures like Ahar-Banas and BMAC interacted with the Indus Civilisation may help to broaden our understanding of the rise, and fall of great civilisations of the world."