KARACHI: Prof Jonathan Mark Kenoyer`s lecture, held at the IBA on Tuesday, was akin to being transported to the historic sites of the Indus civilisation, amid the antiques that were unearthed and the stories they revealed. `The Indus civilisation: New insights on trade, technology and ideology` had Prof Kenoyer share his decades-long experience of carrying out excavations and research on the Indus civilisation, especially the site of Harappa.

A professor of archaeology and ancient technology at the University of Wisconsin, Prof Kenoyer is a published writer, has authored many research papers, was former president of the American Institute of Pakistan Studies and has served as field director and codirector of the Harappa Archaeological Research Project since 1986.

Prof Kenoyer explained how Harappa was a city with many different sub-divisions, and not a city with a single wall as it has many separate areas. It was a city of gateways which meant that people most likely wanted to live outside the city so that they didnothave topaytaxes.

`Eventually the city incorporated the area outside which then became one city. This entire culture was integrated without evidence of massive warfare. We have found spears and daggers; but we have no depictions of people killing people in the Indus civilisation or of people being kept captive or as slaves, whereas in Egypt and Mesopotamia these are very commonly found.

Sharing his ideology about the extent to which the Indus civilisation was a functional state, Prof Kenoyer explained how, according to his definition, the concept of a state is a place where people maintain order vertically and horizontally; where an order of hierarchy is in place, and relations between people who are not related are fostered.

`The Indus civilisation shows evidence of a state. In every city of this civilisation we see this balance which is the result of a state power enforcing andkeepingthingsin order.The Indus state was organised as a corporate state where corporate power was in place. This is where power was shared and everybody had roles to play and worked together as a team; where you had different communities vying forpower and fighting for power, and it fluctuated over time.

According to Prof Kenoyer, many different regions were contributing to the Indus civilisation and his lecture was an attempt to categorise them and also assess the scale of their impact.

`Indus cities were linked by trade networks and these trade networks were reinforced by marriage alliances.

We clearly have evidence that people were moving from one part of the Indus civilisation and living in other parts.

He shared how strontium isotope analysis using the enamel of the teeth to determine the diet and the region a person hails from was used in excavations in the cemetery at Harappa. `This gave us clear evidence that the people buried there were clearly not from Harappa and had come from some other place, and that people from Indus cities were intermarrying over large distances.

Prof Kenoyer shared a presentation of different findings from the Indus civilisation that revealed a changing shift in perspective considering that the civilisation emerged around 2600-1900 BC.

He shared pictures of the evolution of human face mixed with animal faces to make composite images whichexisted in Indus beliefs, and how the Harappans made figurines to depict these. The weights used in trading circles were also discussed, as was ways on how to determine the north, south, east and west axes. The infrastructure of the cities and how it was maintained was also talked about.

`In the Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilisations, the main roads went from the gateway to the palace and the temple which were the centres of power.

The neighbourhoods did not have good streets. But in Moenjodaro and Harappa, the streets went all throughout the walled cities. Every part of the city was connected. They also had ways to transport goods by carts and boats and these links were used throughout the Indus region over huge areas.

Further elaborating on these trade networks and their extensive scale, Prof Kenoyer revealed how figurines at Moenjodaro were found also in Mesopotamia which suggested that Harappan women were also going to Mesopotamia as traders with their families, or had been married into Mesopotamian families yet had retained their own dress.

Responding to a question regarding the end of the civilisation atMoenjodaro, Prof Kenoyer said that many different factors came into play that led toits decline.

`They did not have a military. Feet do your talking and if you don`t like what is going on, you walk away. There was nobody to keep you in the city. So if the river doesn`t flow and the gods don`t send rain and make the fields fertile, then how can you keep people in the city?`He explained that the drying up of the Ghaggar-Hakra-Saraswati River resulted in almost half of the civilisation losing its agricultural land. `This undermined their religious beliefs, and the economic status of the city, which resulted in fragmentation.

At the talk he expressed his desire to excavate Lakhan Jo Daro, an ancient Harappan site where today modern-day Sukkur is present.