Introduction
The Indus civilization is a general term that refers to the first urban society that emerged in the greater Indus valley of Pakistan and northwestern India, between 2600 and 1900 BC. This urban society was first discovered in the 1920s and has also been called the Harappa culture after the type site of Harappa, Pakistan where it was first discovered.
Other common names that are found in the literature include the Indus valley civilization and the Indus-Saraswati civilization.
Another common terminology that will be used in this essay uses the framework of long-term cultural traditions to examine the origin, character, and eventual decline of a civilization. The Indus tradition (also called the Indus valley tradition) refers to the wide range of human adaptations in the greater Indus region over a long span of history, approximately 10 000 to 1000 BC. The Indus tradition encompasses all adaptive strategies that contributed to the emergence and decline of the first phase of urbanism, including hunting-foraging the origins of agriculture and specialized crafts, the emergence of cities and state-level society, and finally the transformation and decline of the Indus cities (Figure 1).
In addition to the Indus, three other major cultural traditions relating to the initial emergence of urbanism can be identified for the northwestern subcontinent: the Baluchistan, Helmand, and the Bactro-Margiana Traditions. These cultural traditions are linked in different ways to processes of socioeconomic and political developments in the subcontinent, beginning as early as the Palaeolithic and continuing through the Early Historic period.
The Indus tradition can be subdivided into ‘eras’ and ‘phases’ that are roughly correlated to major adaptive strategies and regional material cultural styles (Table 1 ). A brief summary of each major era is provided below in order to provide a larger context in which to discuss the urban Harappa phase, of the Integration era, which is the main focus of this essay.
World History
