Harappan craft and exchange: the evidence of making

Production leaves more than finished ornaments

At Harappa, bead-making research connects finished ornaments with drills, unfinished blanks and manufacturing waste. Jonathan Mark Kenoyer’s comparative study describes stone imported from distant resource areas and different working methods for different materials. Soft steatite could be sawn, shaped, perforated and fired; harder stones required other combinations of heating, grinding and drilling. Similar-looking finished beads can therefore conceal different sequences of labour and different supplies of raw material.[1]

The study also records change through time. Its Ravi-phase evidence links local production with sources of agate and amazonite in Gujarat and Rajasthan, lapis from western and northern regions, and coastal shell used for bangles. These are reconstructed connections based on materials and technology. They show that a workshop could use resources obtained far away without proving that each craftsperson personally travelled the whole distance.[1]

A smaller settlement in the wider network

Gola Dhoro, also called Bagasra, provides a coastal comparison in Gujarat, outside Punjab. Its excavators describe shell bangles, unfinished pieces, waste and raw shells together in a workshop. They also found sorted stone stockpiles, interpreting some material as intended for dispatch to other workshops because corresponding manufacturing waste was absent. This comparison makes a network visible at more than one scale: large inland cities depended on relationships extending through smaller production and distribution sites.[2]

Specialisation does not identify a ruler

In a separate study, Kenoyer challenges the assumption that standardised craft products and clustered workshops automatically establish centralised control. Similar archaeological patterns can emerge through different social arrangements. To investigate organisation, he compares technology, raw materials, style and the placement of activities within settlements. The distinction matters when reading an object label: evidence for skilled, specialised production is stronger than a confident story about a named elite directing every workshop. Without deciphered administrative records, taxation and exact systems of labour control remain especially difficult to demonstrate.[3]