Indus towns and cities used many Indian materials not available within the civilization's borders - how did they obtain them?
The town of Lothal lies on the very edge of the Indus realms, in Gujurat, well placed to dominate external trade. Raw materials were brought here from far and wide - ivory from the local area, agate from Saurashtra, carnelian from the Rajpipla mines in Kathiawad.
Craft activities at Lothal were more intensive than at most Indus sites. Some of the finished objects were for local use, others for redistribution throughout the Indus realm. But many were for trade with local hunter-gatherers who set up temporary camps on the nearby North Gujurat plains as part of their annual round of movements to exploit seasonally available plants and other resources.
Living on the periphery of farming communities, hunter-gatherers had developed a symbiotic relationship with them, trading forest products, such as honey, for manufactured goods or agricultural produce.
Domestic animals and Indus copper objects in hunter-gatherer camps like Langnaj and Bagor demonstrate that hunter-gatherers were obliging the Indus traders at Lothal in just this way - but were also probably bringing in southern produce like gold and amethyst from the farming communities of South India and the Deccan.
