Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c12.54

c12.54

We shall see that the storage of grain was, at Harappā at least, and by inference at Mohenjo-daro as well, carried out as part of a government agricultural policy, and that, adjacent to the municipal granaries, the preparation of flour – the equivalent of corn-milling – was also part of a controlled economy using organized labour. It is to be presumed that other state-controlled industries would be brick-manufacture, and that the supply of wood fuel for this and for pottery-baking, both in terms of mass-production, would involve some sort of forestry force. No brick kilns have so far been discovered; as these are likely to have been large, they would certainly have been set outside the main occupied area of the city, where the smoke would not offend the inhabitants. Pottery-kilns are known only in the latest phase of the city at Mohenjo-daro, and bespeak decadence: even quite small pottery-kilns are today set outside the town walls in India - partly to avoid the smoke and partly to obviate the risk of fire to adjacent premises. But in the degenerate days at Mohenjo-daro they were built in the town - even in the street.