Talk:Periodization of the Indus Valley Civilization

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who uses these terms? who uses "Integration Era" instead of "Harappan", and who uses "Tradition" to refer to sets of archaeological cultures spanning six millennia? It seems awfully idiosyncratic, if not OR. Now this "Regionalization" terminology is spreading to other articles, and nobody seems to question if these terms are mainsteam at all. Maybe they are, I don't know, but the burden of pointing this out lies with the author of this article. dab (ᛏ) 20:43, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

The Indus Valley (Cultural) Tradition terminology has been used by archaeologists since the last 10-15 years. You have yourself added a table of the phases of the Integration Era [1] to the Indus Valley Civilization article (!) If you can add this terminology, why not others?

If I don't understand something on wikipedia, I'd try to read the references or some introductory and up to date books on the topic. I added some references to the article. If you want to understand the concept fully, you should read some of these references and other works on the IVC. One good introduction to the Indus Valley Civilization that I can recommend is Kenoyer's Ancient Cities of the Indus Valley Civilization This is an introductory text, but gives a good overview and has also a chapter that explains the IV Tradition. Kenoyer has also written more technical papers on this concept.

The Indus Valley Tradition article is useful, because it covers more than the IVC article (which is only about the Integration Era), and because it is useful to have an article where the complexities and details of the IV Tradition can be explained. The Cultural Tradition concept was first used by American archaeologists like Willey, and has been applied to South Asian archaeology (there is also a Baluchistan and Helmand tradition).

Of the two terminologies Early/Mature/Late Harappan and the Indus Valley Tradition, the IV Tradition should probably be prefered because Wikipedia should use the most scholarly terminology. Erdosy, who by the way didn't invent the terms, said the IV Tradition terminology "is much more informative than the traditional Early/Mature/Late Harappan classification which should now be discarded." However, I think both concepts can be explained and used in the IVC article. There are also some other probably less important terminologies for the chronology of the IVC. --Rayfield 17:49, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

One problem may be that there is not one single terminology that is used by all archaeologists. This is because the archaeologists are scatterd in Europe, USA, India, Pakistan and Japan. The Indus Valley Tradition terminology is used by American archaeologists and scholars, but maybe it is not as widely used by Indian archaeologists. --Rayfield 18:15, 10 April 2006 (UTC)