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Inequality declined in the Bronze Age city of Mohenjo-daro

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 May 2026

Adam S. Green*
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology, University of York, UK Department of Environment and Geography, University of York, UK
Iqtedar Alam
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, UK
Cameron Petrie
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, UK
*
Author for correspondence: Adam S. Green adam.green@york.ac.uk
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Abstract

Mohenjo-daro was a major city of the Indus Civilisation (c. 2600–1900 BC), with excavations revealing evidence for public infrastructure, civic amenities and hundreds of residences. Archaeologists traditionally assume that urbanism is accompanied by economic stratification, but, at Mohenjo-daro, qualitative evidence of inequality is absent. Drawing on early excavation data, the authors here calculate Gini coefficients of residence area, providing a quantitative proxy of economic inequality. Their results indicate that Gini coefficients, and thus inequality, declined over time, coinciding with increased prosperity and the development of the city’s street plan, indicating that governance likely helped limit economic inequality.

Information

Type
Research Article
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that no alterations are made and the original article is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press or the rights holder(s) must be obtained prior to any commercial use and/or adaptation of the article.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2026. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Antiquity Publications Ltd
Figure 0

Figure 1. Mohenjo-daro and its excavation areas (figure by authors; basemap consists of Google Earth Imagery © 2026; inset basemap is from Natural Earth).

Figure 1

Figure 2. A view of DK-G South, facing north-west, from December 2023, highlighting the complexity of the standing architecture at Mohenjo-daro (photograph by Adam S. Green).

Figure 2

Figure 3. Diachronic change in architectural plans in DK-G South. The bottom image depicts the earliest structure plans recovered from the area, and the top depicts the later structure plans. Map prepared using data from Mackay (1938) using QGIS v.3.42 (figure by authors; basemap consists of Google Earth Imagery © 2026).

Figure 3

Figure 4. Residences identified by early excavators in area HR. Map prepared using data from Marshall (1931) and QGIS v. 3.42 (figure by authors).

Figure 4

Table 1. Gini coefficients of residential disparity at Mohenjo-daro, alongside measurements of residence area and sample information.

Figure 5

Figure 5. Trajectory of Gini coefficients in DK-G South. The confidence interval for the overall time series is shown in grey and the central tendency for each period sample at the 0.80 confidence interval is also shown at each point (figure by authors).

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