Robert Arnott – författare

Disease and Healing in the Indus Civilisation presents a synthesis of what is currently known about health, disease and healing in the Indus Civilisation in the third to early second millennia BCE, underpinned by original research. It is the result of a detailed study of published human skeletal remains and material culture, with an increasing awareness of the natural environment. When combined with a knowledge of palaeoepidemiology and the natural history of disease, ancient climate change, and what is known of healing and health in contemporary Bronze Age societies of the Near East, with which the Indus Civilisation was in contact, it has been possible to piece together a picture of diseases in the period, the practice of healing and the development of public health. For the first time, the book illustrates the health, life expectancy, and the illnesses and injuries from which those at the bottom of society suffered, both at work and at home.

The earliest contacts between the Aegean and the Indus were once thought to begin in the sixth century BCE, and yet there is now growing evidence of much earlier, indirect connections that extend into the third and fourth millennia BCE. There and Back Again evaluates the evidence for such contacts, particularly commodities such as tin and lapis lazuli, and discusses recently discovered objects, new methods of materials analysis techniques and topics, as well as iconographic investigation. Such studies clearly indicate the presence of indirect, or ‘trickle down’ contacts, where Mesopotamia functions as an intermediary between Africa and Europe in the west and Asia. In such a system, objects, iconography, and culture accumulate material and social value as they were exchanged through Mesopotamia and the Near East, to the Aegean and beyond. From the Early through Late Bronze Age, the Indus (and more broadly South Asia) remained critical to western regions for valuable, indispensable commodities destined for elites from Mesopotamia and other regions to the west. The volume’s case studies are complex and multifaceted, including but not limited to linguistics, iconography, paleobotany, archaeology, ancient disease and medicine, as well as scientific, materials, and technological analysis. As such, this collection of 11 papers constitutes the first of a series that seek to address a lingering lacuna in prehistoric studies: multi-disciplinary case-studies of Afro-Eurasian exchange.