Indus Inc

The findings and research conducted by the team suggests that the island hosted a big shell industry during the late Harappan period which produced various artefacts that were marketed to Gulf countries and Mesopotamia.

Archaeologists at the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) in Goa say some of the excavated sites on the island are 3,800 years old and correspond to the late Harappan period.

‘‘The shells probably represent an artefact-making industry for Indus settlements,’’ says NIO marine archeologist Sila Tripathi. According to the study, marine shells were more popular than ivory or bone, the two other contemporary raw materials used for making artefacts and ornaments in the Indus Valley.

THE presence of cut and unfinished pieces and waste pieces on the island indicates that this was an industrial site, says Tripathi. The NIO team found fragments of bangles, beads, a seal and unfinished ladles and semi-precious stones from the Bet Dwarka site.

In past excavations, beads, ladles and feeding cups and various shell-based artefacts were found at Harappan sites, including Lothal, Mohenjodaro, Nageshwar, Surkotada and Rangpur.

While archaeologists have long believed that the shell artefacts for the Indus Valley people came from the Gulf of Kutch, they say that Nageshwar, a Harappan site on the Gujarat coast, was the only site for an ancient shell industry which was identified 15 years ago.

The research by the NIO scientists on Bet Dwarka, conducted during 2000-01 shows that the island’s shell-industry might have been one of the largest enterprises of its time and formed the backbone of the thriving economy.

In a recent report, the scientists of NIO have documented similarities between the shells at Bet Dwarka and artefacts recovered from Harappan sites.

‘‘A unique late Harappan seal constructed out of a conch shell with a short-horned bull, a unicorn and goat engraved on it found during underwater excavation near the island is similar to a seal recovered from Mohenjodaro,’’ says an NIO scientist who believes that such findings helps them to connect various civilisations and trace their social and economic links.

Currently, NIO scientists are conducting coastal surveys in Porbandar as a part of the all-India coastal belt research.