Stoneware Bangles (technology IVC developed 2 millennia before China)

[W.11]

The Harappans manufactured some of the world's first stoneware in the sense of a very dense, impermeable, homogeneous, siliceous ceramic (Vidale 1990). The ceramicist Bernard Leach states that the word stoneware "is appropriate enough, for it suggests the quality of melted stone" (Leach 1976: 36). The most similar ancient product, according to David Kingery (personal communication) who has examined some of the Harappa samples, is probably the dense black stoneware made in China during the Han dynasty some two millennia after the Harappan period. Leach (1976:28) also attributes the invention of stoneware to early China, between the second and sixth centuries BC. These exceptionally high quality bangles have been reported from both Harappa and Mohenjo-daro by the earlier excavators. Marshall (1931:530, 686) had tests run on samples from Mohenjo-daro, but until recently no one had studied them systematically. Such studies began with the German-Italian Research Project at Mohenjo-daro, with Massimo Vidale taking a particular interest in this material (Halim and Vidale 1984; Vidale 1987, 1990). Now, thanks to cooperative research programs between the Harappa project, the Conservation Analytical Laboratory (CAL) of the Smithsonian Institution, and members of the Mohenjodaro project, significant progress is being made in the analyses of specific products such as stoneware. Massimo Vidale of the Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente (Rome) and M.J. Blackman of CAL have collaborated on making comparative chemical characterization studies of stoneware bangles from Harappa and Mohenjo-daro (Blackman and Vidale 1992). The chemical analysis of the bangles was carried out by instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA). Twenty-nine elements were sought, twenty-two of which were used in the comparative studies. In addition to the ancient bangle samples, a single modern bangle replica made at Harappa by J.M. Kenoyer, using clay from the Ravi river beds near the site, was also analyzed. This same clay is nowadays used by a village of potters near Harappa and provides a reliable reference for the chemical composition of the locally available raw material. The results of the analysis have a direct bearing on the question of specialized production centers at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro and the nature and degree of interaction and exchange between them. Two well defined chemical groups have been identified in the bangles, with each group distinctive of either Harappa or Mohenjo-daro. The rarity of stoneware bangles, the complex and singular nature of the manufacturing technology, the strict control of production (Halim and Vidale 1984), the presence of inscriptions on some of the bangles, and the fact that the production (and use?) of stoneware bangles is known at only the major sites of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, suggest to Blackman and Vidale (1992) that the bangles had a unique social function. Also, the fact that bangles identified as having been manufactured at Mohenjo-daro are found at Harappa, but bangles produced at Harappa have not been identified at Mohenjo-daro, suggests some type of special exchange system and even a special relationship for Mohenjo-daro vis-a-vis Harappa. Specialized studies such as these are providing unexpected new information concerning various important aspects of Harappan society.

https://www.harappa.com/sites/default/files/pdf/Harappa1986-90_05_Dales-Ceramics_1.pdf