Q1.
For each characteristic in the list above, can you make a list of professions or occupations that might exist in such a society?
Answer
Take the seven characteristics one at a time and ask: who would have to do this job every day? Here is a full list — every profession named below could really have existed in a Harappan city, and most of them left something behind that archaeologists have dug up.
| Characteristic | Professions or occupations it needs | What they would have left behind |
|---|---|---|
| Government and administration | Ruler or chief; council members; city administrators; tax or store officials; record-keepers; judges; supervisors of public works; guards | Warehouses, standard weights, planned streets |
| Urbanism | Town planner; surveyor; brick-maker; mason; carpenter; well-digger; drain-builder; sweeper and drain-cleaner; water carrier | Bricks of standard size, wells, covered drains, reservoirs |
| Crafts | Potter; bead-maker and bead-driller; shell-bangle maker; coppersmith and bronze-smith; goldsmith; ivory carver; stone-cutter; weaver; dyer; toy- and game-maker | The mirror, chisel, beads, comb, whistle and gamesboard of Fig. 6.14 |
| Trade | Merchant; shopkeeper; caravan driver (bullock-cart); boatman and sailor; dockyard worker; porter; weigher; seal-cutter | Seals, weights, the Lothal dockyard, beads found at Susa |
| Writing | Scribe; seal-engraver; person who kept accounts of stored grain and goods | Inscribed seals and tablets |
| Cultural ideas | Sculptor and figurine-maker; painter of pots; musician and dancer; storyteller; priest or ritual specialist; toy-maker | The ‘Dancing Girl’, the ‘Priest King’, the namaste figurine, the thirsty-crow pot |
| Agriculture | Farmer; ploughman; herder and cattle-keeper; fisherman; miller; cotton grower; gardener; cart-driver bringing grain to the city | The clay plough model from Banawali; animal and fish bones |
The point of the exercise. Count the list: roughly forty different jobs. In a hunting-and-gathering group almost everyone does the same few things. In a civilisation people specialise — and specialisation is only possible when farmers grow more food than they need.
Try this: pick any object on pages 100–101 and work backwards to the people who made it. The bronze chisel alone needs a copper miner, a tin trader, a smelter, a smith who knows the right proportions, and a carpenter who will buy it. One small tool, five occupations.
Why this is a history skill, not a guessing game: archaeologists do exactly this. They find a heap of half-drilled carnelian beads and a broken stone drill in one house, and conclude that a bead-maker worked there. Objects are evidence for occupations, and occupations are evidence for how a society was organised.