From Emblems to Administrative Media: Reassessing the Social and Economic Functions of Indus Seals

Abstract

Indus or Harappan seals have often been interpreted as miniature artworks, ownership marks, merchant devices, badges of authority, ritual objects, or material witnesses to an undeciphered script. This study reassesses their social and economic functions by treating seals not as isolated iconographic objects but as components of a wider documentary ecology that included sealings, tablets, standardized weights, storerooms, gates, workshops, containers, and interregional exchange practices. The study does not propose a decipherment of the Indus script. Instead, it develops an evidence-weighted synthesis of excavation reports, seal corpora, contextual studies, inscriptional statistics, iconographic analyses, museum records, and recent digital methods. The central argument is that no single-function model can explain the corpus. The strongest archaeological evidence supports administrative and economic uses in closure control, storage regulation, access management, and regulated exchange; moderate evidence supports identity or office display through portable seals, perforated bosses, and repeated motif-inscription pairings; and a smaller but important group of narrative, composite, and deity-like motifs indicates symbolic or ritual meanings that probably enhanced rather than replaced practical authority. By separating seals, sealings, tablets, tags, and graffiti as different object classes, and by distinguishing direct archaeological evidence from interpretive hypotheses, the study offers a more cautious and testable model than traditional merchant-brand or religious-symbol explanations. It concludes with a research agenda prioritizing linked object-context databases, 3D imaging, experimental sealing, use-wear analysis, and residue studies of sealed containers.