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There is very little on the legitimate market from the "true" Indus Valley Civilzation which was fairly close to the Indus River in what is now Pakistan and mainly in the province of Sindh. Here were the famous sites of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro.

 

 

A great deal of pottery  and many terracotta figurines, (and also countless numbers of fake terracota figurines!) , have come out of Balochistan provence and North West Pakistan near the Afghanistan border since the recent conflict there. Whether this material is  truly of Indus Civilization "outpost" origin or is from autonomous civilizations is still something which is undecided.

 

 

Similar material came out of this arera in the early and mid 1980s during the Soviet Afghanistan period of turmoil.

 

 

The images here from a collection of such material are almost exclusively from this earlier time when such pottery was on the international market and indeed a few more unusal pieces were acquired quite some time before then. 

 

Generally speaking, looking at the diversity of motifs and sheer charm of much of this collection it is probable that it derives  from somewhere near but not exactly from the same areas which the flood of more recent pottery comes from.

 

Books concerning this corpus of pottery are not easy to acquire. There are few publications suitable for collectors and much of the archaeological work is not published in English.

 

 

This is an interesting website about Baluchistan archaeology.

 

http://www.harappa.com/baluch/e1.html

http://www.harappa.com/baluch/e1.html




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Much of the material on the market is  Nal  and circa 2500 BC.  Some is Kuli Culture and some Nindowari and some Mehgarh.

 

Nal pottery is well-known to archeologists of this region for its bold linear styles and unexpected use of colour that took ancient motifs in new directions. In particular, Nal pottery is characterized by geometric repetition of shapes and lines often in an echoing or rippling fashion. Nal pottery can be often be distinguished from other pottery in the region by its distinctive raised, ring foot.

 

This  type of pottery was fired at very high temperature and produced a fairly fragile composition. Not surprisingly, a very large proportion of Indus pottery objects  show some sign of repair.

 

The very best resource  for info for such pottery is

 

History of Civilizations in Central Asia edited by V. M. Masson Dani A. H. and Janos Harmatta.

But it’s difficult to get hold of and very expensive.

 

The  chapters by J G Shaffer and B K Y Thappar , page page 244 onwards can be read here:

 

 http://tinyurl.com/yclf4re

 

The first excavations at Sohr Damb, the principal site of the Nal culture, took place in 1925. They revealed a cultural horizon, whose pottery from the technical and aesthetical aspect belongs to the most remarkable productions of the early 3rd millennium BC. After this time the area was not accessible for over 50 years  due to political conditions.

 

 

A cursory read of such as  Dilip  K Chakrabarti's India: An Archaeological History or the many archaeological articles available online such as  will demonstate the degree of debate and complexity in the archaeology of this area of the world.

 

 

 

This is a particularly interesting and highly unusual piece whose shape reminds one of a Chinese neolithic pottery form: see the photo on the right.

 

 








A rather unusual and large vessel whose genral shape and offset neck reminds one strongly of the Chinese Neolithic type.
It has much more finely painted decoration that the majority of such material seen.

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Some unusually nice Nal pottery closed form bowls from a collection in the UK.  Some of these are available; email me if you are possibly interested .

 


















Some open form Nal pottery bowls