The Published Archaeobotanical Data from the Indus Civilisation, South Asia, c.3200–1500BC

Abstract

The collection of this dataset of published archaeobotanical data from the Indus Civilisation (c.3200–1500BC) was carried out by the author as part of her doctoral work, and has continued up to October 2017. The dataset represents a systematic collation of all primary published macrobotanical data, regardless of their designation as ‘crop’, ‘fully domesticated’ or ‘wild/weedy’ species. The dataset comprises 63 sites and 339 ‘taxa’ (including less confidently identified elements such as ‘charred seed’). Data is presented as presence/absence due to different sampling, quantification and data presentation practices. Funding statement: This paper developed out of research conducted while the author was a PhD student working as part of the 'Land, Water and Settlement' project, which has been investigating human–environment relations in northwest India. It presents material gathered for a literature review that formed part of the author’s PhD dissertation, and expanded upon during her first post-doctoral position as Trevelyan research fellow at Selwyn College, University of Cambridge. The PhD research was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), United Kingdom (Grant No. 1080510), and this paper has been written up while she has been a Post-doctoral Research Associate at the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World, Brown University, and published while she is a post doctoral fellow at the Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania. The 'Land, Water and Settlement' project ran from 2007 to 2014 and was primarily funded by a Standard Award from the UK India Education Research Initiative United Kingdom (UKIERI) under the title ‘From the collapse of Harappan urbanism to the rise of the great Early Historic cities: Investigating the cultural and geographical transformation of northwest India between 2000 and 300 BC’. Smaller grants were also awarded by the British Academy’s Stein Arnold Fund, United Kingdom, the Isaac Newton Trust, the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, United Kingdom, and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), United Kingdom.

Keywords

• archaeobotany
• Indus Civilisation
• South Asia
• Bronze Age
• macrobotanical
• Harappan