Opinion National Interest PoV 50-Word Edit

ThePrint On Camera Videos In Pictures

Society & Culture Around Town Book Excerpts Vigyapanti The Dating Story

More Judiciary Education YourTurn Work With Us Campus Voice

Opinion National Interest PoV 50-Word Edit

ThePrint On Camera Videos In Pictures

Society & Culture Around Town Book Excerpts Vigyapanti The Dating Story

More Judiciary Education YourTurn Work With Us Campus Voice

Support our Journalism

9th Anniversary: Free Tote & Mug

Inequality reduced as Mohenjo-daro urbanised, says UK study. It ignores Harappan villages

A recent study by researchers in the UK proposes that inequality declined in Mohenjo-daro with the rise of urbanisation roughly 5,000 years ago.

A recent paper examines the relationship between urbanisation and inequality at Mohenjo–daro. Using archaeological data from residential buildings excavated at the site, authors Adam S Green, Iqtedar Alam, and Cameron Petrie calculated the Gini coefficient of the areas as a quantitative proxy for economic inequality.

Titled ‘Inequality declined in the Bronze Age city of Mohenjo-daro’, the study was published in Antiquity. It proposes that inequality declined in the Harappan city of Mohenjo-daro with the rise of urbanisation roughly 5,000 years ago, thus breaking away from the correlation between urbanisation and inequality.

The paper brings a fresh perspective through statistical analysis, opening up an age-old debate about the nature of Harappan society, particularly the correlation between social and economic disparities and the rise of cities. More importantly, it brings into focus the relationship between statistical interpretation and archaeological understanding, which stems from rigorous fieldwork, material evidence, and spatial context. 

Rather than accepting the findings as a straightforward description of Harappan society, it is important to examine what the analysis actually demonstrates, how it relates to archaeological interpretations, and its limitations.

The statistical study

The study looks at one of the largest Harappan cities, Mohenjo-daro, located in the Sindh province of present-day Pakistan. From excavated data, the size of residential buildings was used as a proxy for household wealth and economic disparities, if any existed. Around 309 residential buildings were used to calculate the Gini coefficient, a statistical measure of economic inequality that describes how evenly income or wealth is distributed across a population. The overall........

© ThePrint