HISTORY
Subject
:
History
(For under graduate student)
Paper No.
:
Paper-I
History of India
Unit, Topic & Title
:
Unit- 4
Topic- 2
Indus Civilization
Lecture No. & Title
:
Lecture 3
Architecture, Craft & Technology
FAQs
1.
What were some of the crops cultivated by the
Early Harappans?
Harappans mostly relied on Rabi crops like wheat and
barley, along with lintel, mustard, peas, linseed, gram
etc. There were also some summer crops like sesame,
cotton, rice and millets. Baer, date seeds and beans
have been identified as crops that grew throughout the
year. Fiber and oil extracted from cotton and sesame
were also used.
2.
Mention some of the uses of the Sindh River.
The river Sindh with its numerous tributaries was the
main
drainage
system
for
many
of
the
Indus
settlements. It provided water and fertile soil; it may
even have been used as a transportation system.
3.
Mention the remains that indicate the use of
copper.
Copper and copper alloys formed the most dominant
part. There are several tangible indicators to this1) Presence of fragments of oars,
2) Presence of kilns or fragments of kilns,
3) Slag that is present from the copper smelting
activities as seen at Balaghat and
4) Tools which were used like crucible fragments,
moulds, metal drills, anvils, hammer stones.
5) Presence of semi-finished or finished metal objects,
like smelting or melting ingots.
4.
What
was Gordon
Childe’s
opinion
about
the
Bronze Age economy?
Gordon Childe (1892 – 1957) was the pioneer of the
archaeological theory, that the Bronze Age was beyond
just the Bronze Age technology. He tried to relate Bronze
Age technology to specialization and different forms of
urbanism which had greater socio-economic implications.
5.
What is Shireen Ratnagar’s opinion on trade in the
Bronze Age?
Shireen Ratnagar says that when one party is willing to
sell certain objects to another person in exchange of
others there is an inbuilt commercial advantage there.
That would be exchange; it might not always be trade
when there is no market system, when there is no
currency system as
in the
case
of the
Harappan
Civilization. So the exchange of some foreign goods
could be a sign of a peace treaty or display of status and
not necessarily due to trade. So archaeologists should be
very careful when they are using the term trade
especially in the case of Bronze Age economy.
6.
Name the countries in which the Indus Civilization
flourished.
The remains of the Indus or the Harappan civilization can
be found in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
7.
What evidences of pastoralism have archaeologists
found in the Indus Civilization?
Archaeologists talk about pastoralism from an analysis of
faunal remains as well as comparative studies of species
both wild and domesticated in different regions and
iconographic representations of animals.
8.
What were the places of the Indus Civilization
where copper smelting has been discovered?
Copper smelting has been discovered in Lothal, Mohenjo
Daro, Alavino and Balakot.
9.
Mention the articles indicating the bead-making
industry at a particular site.
The indicators of bead working at the various sites are
nodules, bead rejects, vesters, stone drills, holes for
grinding and some unfinished bead objects.
10. Where did the raw material for the shell industry
come from?
The raw material for the conch industry came from the
Karachi and Makran coast, Oman and the Gulf of Kutch
and Gulf of Khambat.