What was Lapidary of Indus Civilization?

The lapidary craft was widely practiced and its products included the manufacture of ornaments from semi-precious stones, such as agate, carnelian, Jasper, quartz, lapis lazuli, turquoise, amazonite, etc.

In the past, beads were considered minor antiquities, but the current studies have demonstrated their importance for understanding social and ritual status, ethnic identity, economic controls and trade and exchange networks that united the distant settlements of the Indus Tradition.

The discovery of agate bead- making workshops at Mohenjodaro, Harappa, Chanhudaro, Nagwada, Lewan, Ghazi Shah, Rahmandheri, Banawali, Dholavira, Lothal, Surkotada, etc. and bead processing or market area found at many other sites indicate that these were a critical feature of all Harappan settlements.

Mackay was able to reconstruct the broad outline of the manufacturing sequence of carnelian beads, including the beautiful long barrel specimens, possibly the subject of long-distance trade with Mesopotamia. Long bead, produced at Chanhudaro, required a difficult and expensive manufacturing sequence, probably involving multiple cycles of firing, sawing with metal tools, and chipping, smoothing and multistage drilling process with highly specialized drills.

These drills are a specific Harappan type labelled as ‘constricted cylindrical drills’ of the Early Indus phase. Drills used for agate and carnelian at Harappa, Mohenjodaro, Chanhudaro, Nagwada and Dholavira were made with a very distinctive rock named ‘Ernestite’ after Ernest Mackay.

It is also believed that many of the long carnelian beads found at Ur were produced in the Indus valley while many of them may have been produced in Mesopotamia by migrant Indus artisans, members of the so-called Melluhan minority documented in Mesopotamian texts.