An Encyclopaedia of Indian Archaeology v1.c10.s1.14

v1.c10.s1.14

For the dating of the Harappa culture [4.9] ‘evidence of Indus-Mesopotamian contact or “artefact-associations” constituted the main basis of Indus chronology’ (Brunswig, 1975, p. 112), and ‘the chronology of the Indus civilization became generally synchronized with that of Sumer, Akkad, and Old Babylonia’ (*ibid.*, p. 114). The material that helped in fixing the chronology includes nearly 30 Indus seals discovered at various sites in Iraq and certain objects of probable w. origin found at the Harappa sites (Lal, 1953, p. 87). Marshall assigned 500 years ‘to cover the whole rise and fall of the Indus civilization’ on the basis of thickness of deposits and proposed the date between *c.* 3250 and 2750 b.c. on the basis of proof of intercourse between the Indus valley, Mesopotamia and Elam as afforded by seals and other objects and motifs which indicate connections between the Indus valley civilization and contemporary Mesopotamia (Marshall, 1931, pp. 103-6). These objects include Harappa seals, sealings and seal imitations found at Ur, Umma Tell Asmar and Kish from pre-Sargonid, Sargonid, Kassite and Larsa levels and etched carnelian beads from Akkadian deposits at Tell Asmar; besides, gold disc beads with axial tube used at Mohenjo-daro and found at Mesopotamian sites of Early Dynastic III-Akkadian date and in Troy II G, about 2300 b.c., also supplement the evidence of seals (Wheeler, 1968, pp. 99 and 113). The evidence of the ‘Persian Gulf’ seal at Lothal, a ‘Persian Gulf’ seal with Indus script at the Barbar culture site on the Island of Failaka and the Harappa weights, as also carnelian beads unearthed at Barbar also suggest ‘that the Harappans from the Indus region maintained some form of contact with the Barbar culture sometime between 2400 and 1900 b.c.’ (Brunswig, 1975, p. 119). In fact the ‘Persian Gulf’ seals in general can be used ‘as a chronological anchor to pin down Indus-Mesopotamian-Persian Gulf contact to a time span between 2400 and 1900 b.c.’ (*ibid.*, p. 118).