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New Finds in the Indus Valley1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 April 2016
Extract
During last winter I made some archaeological researches in the upper part of the Indus Valley, and the results of my investigations are herein published.
Some years ago, Major D. H. Gordon, a British officer on duty in the NW. Frontier Province of India, discovered that archaeological remains were coming from a mound called Sari-Dheri, near Charsadda, in the district of Peshawar. He published certain of these, which he bought from the native villagers, with what information he could gather concerning the location of the finds. These, in his opinion, belonged to the Graeco-Buddhist culture, that Hellenistic civilization which arose in India after the conquest of Alexander the Great. Now I agree with Major Gordon that some of these terra-cottas belong to the Hellenistic school of Gandharian art, towards the beginning of our era, but I believe that others among these objects, which show definitely an archaic style and technique, are far more ancient. They represent, in fact, a new aspect of the Indus chalcolithic civilization, of which, hitherto, no traces had been found in the north (Fig. I)
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- Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1937
Footnotes
1
A communication read before the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Blackpool, 1936.
References
page 1 note 2 Cf. Bulletin des Musées Royaux d'Art et d'Histoire, 1936, no. 2, pp. 42–5Google Scholar.
page 1 note 3 Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 1932, 163–71Google Scholar; Man, 1934, 70, and 1935, 129 Google Scholar.
page 1 note 4 Arch. Survey of India, Report (by Cunningham), 1872–1873, 108 Google Scholar.
page 2 note 1 Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 1932, 163 Google Scholar.
page 3 note 1 I.P.E.K., 1928, 64–76 Google Scholar; article India in Encyclopedia Britannica xii. 212 Google Scholar; Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 12 1927, pl. IV, 3, 90–6Google Scholar.
page 5 note 1 Man, 09 1935, 160 Google Scholar.
page 5 note 2 Dr. Mackay tells me that among the non-published material of Mohenjo-Daro this feature is quite frequent.
page 5 note 3 I gratefully acknowledge here, for this photograph on pl. III, 8–9, as well as for pl. IV, Figs. 5–7, that Dr. Frankfort has authorized me to make use of these before their publication by him.
page 5 note 4 Compare with Plate III, 7 and Fig. 2, nos. 3–6, for the technique of the head-dress, which was presumably affixed separately, and with Fig. 2, no. 14, for the way of indicating the necklace by rows of incised dots. Note also the cone-like termination of the arms.
page 5 note 5 This triangle represents the pudenda region emphasized. For these symbols of the fertility cult, cf. Ryedh, A., Symbolism in Mortuary Ceramics (Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm, no. 1, 110)Google Scholar, and Hentze, C., Mythes et Symboles lunaires, p. 60 Google Scholar.
page 5 note 6 In Tall Chagar Bazar, over the Samarra level (cf. British Museum Quarterly, 1936, no. 3, 121)Google Scholar; in Ur, dated 3000 B.c. (at the British Museum, nos. 1853–4); in the Cyclades (cf. Edgar, C. C., Excav. at Phylakopi, 187)Google Scholar; in the early Cypriote Bronze Age (cf. Syria, 1932, pl. LXXVI); in the proto-historic levels of Knossos (cf. SirEvans, A., Palace of Minos, 1)Google Scholar; &c.
page 5 note 7 ‘Many of the female figures wear a very distinctive head-dress, which rises fan-like from the back of the head (pl. xciv, 12 and 14 pl. xcv, 8, 26 and 28). In some cases this head-dress appears to rise direct from the head (pl. xcv, 26).’ E. Mackay, p. 338, vol. 1 of Sir John Marshall, Mohenjo-Daro. This fan-like head-dress appears also on the Chanhu-Daro figurine, Fig. 5, which bears a round ornament hanging between the breasts like the archaic figurine from Sulai-Dheri (Peshawar District) in Bulletin des Musées Royaux d'Art et d'Histoire, 03-April, 1936, Fig. 13Google Scholar.
page 7 note 1 Illustr. London News, 11 21, 1936, 909, fig. 9.Google Scholar
page 7 note 2 New Light on the Most Ancient East, 15.
page 7 note 3 Cf. Iraq, Spring 1936, 97–100 Google Scholar.
page 8 note 1 The Palace of Minos, I. 82–3Google Scholar.
page 10 note 1 The Archaeological Survey of India, Annual Report for 1928-9, pl. xxviii, text p. 73. Published in 1933.
page 10 note 2 ‘Inde et Mésopotamie’, Bulletin des Musées Royaux d'Art et d'Histoire’, 11 1933, p. 133, fig. 12Google Scholar.
page 10 note 3 They belong to the Pearse's Collection of Engraved Gems, a private collection gathered in India in the latter half of the nineteenth century.
page 10 note 4 A.S.I., A.R., 1928-9, A. 136, pl. LV, nos. 1 and 3.