Infection, Disease, and Biosocial Processes at the End of the Indus Civilization

Featured Image

Why is it important?

The Indus Civilization is one of the most enigmatic of all third millennium BC civilizations, largely because the script has yet to be deciphered. Despite almost a century of research, questions remains about the basic character of the Indus culture and their social organization. Recent paleoclimate research has shed more light on the pressures faced by the Harappans at the end of the third millennium and this research demonstrates that urbanization, culture contact, and social change were accompanied by changes in the paleoepidemiological profile. In the last few centuries of urban life, infection, infectious disease and traumatic injury were increasingly part of the Indus experience.