History · Ch 1 — Bricks, Beads and Bones — The Harappan Civilisation
Finding Out About Craft Production
Finding Out About Craft Production
Understanding Craft Production in the Harappan Civilisation
Archaeologists study craft production to understand how goods were made, where they were made, and how they moved between settlements. The key is to look for evidence of manufacturing — not just finished objects, but the waste and tools left behind.
Chanhudaro: A Tiny Craft Town
- Size comparison: Chanhudaro was a very small settlement (less than 7 hectares), while Mohenjodaro was huge (125 hectares).
- Specialisation: Chanhudaro was almost entirely devoted to craft production — bead-making, shell-cutting, metal-working, seal-making, and weight-making.
Materials and Techniques for Bead-Making
Beads were made from a wide variety of materials:
- Stones: carnelian (red), jasper, crystal, quartz, steatite.
- Metals: copper, bronze, gold.
- Other materials: shell, faience, terracotta (burnt clay).
Some beads were made from two or more stones cemented together, or from stone with gold caps. Shapes included disc-shaped, cylindrical, spherical, barrel-shaped, and segmented. Decoration included incising, painting, and etching.
Techniques for Making Beads
The method depended on the material's hardness:
- Steatite (a very soft stone) was easily worked. Some beads were moulded from a paste made with steatite powder, allowing a variety of shapes — unlike harder stones that only gave geometric forms.
- Carnelian's red colour was obtained by firing the yellowish raw material and beads at various stages of production.
- General process for hard stones:
- Nodules were chipped into rough shapes.
- Then finely flaked into the final form.
- Grinding, polishing, and drilling completed the process.
Specialised drills have been found at Chanhudaro, Lothal, and Dholavira.
Centres of Shell and Finished Goods
- Nageshwar and Balakot (both near the coast) were specialised centres for making shell objects — bangles, ladles, and inlay — which were taken to other settlements.
- Finished products (like beads) from Chanhudaro and Lothal were likely taken to large urban centres such as Mohenjodaro and Harappa.
Identifying Centres of Production
Archaeologists look for these four types of evidence:
- Raw material — stone nodules, whole shells, copper ore.
- Tools — drills, hammers, etc.
- Unfinished objects — items in the process of being made. …
What Figure 1.13 Shows
Figure 1.13 is a photograph of two objects placed side by side: a drill tool and a collection of beads. The drill is a long, slender, pointed implement — likely made of a hard stone such as chert or flint — used for boring holes through beads. The beads are of various shapes (disc-shaped, cylindrical, spherical, barrel-shaped, segmented) and materials (carnelian, jasper, crystal, quartz, steatite, faience, terracotta). Some beads appear plain, while others may show incised or painted decoration. The image is not a map or diagram; it is a simple, direct visual of the actual artefacts.
What It Teaches About Harappan Craft Production
The figure illustrates the specialised bead-making craft that was a hallmark of Harappan civilisation. The drill tool is the key piece of technology — without it, beads of hard stone like carnelian could not be perforated. The presence of such drills at sites like Chanhudaro, Lothal, and Dholavira confirms that these were centres of intensive bead production. The beads themselves show the variety of materials used: stones (carnelian, jasper, crystal, quartz, steatite), metals (copper, bronze, gold), shell, faience, and terracotta. The shapes and decorations (incising, painting, etching) reveal a high level of skill and aesthetic sense.