Households, Objects and Working Spaces in the Indo-Greek Region: Evidence for Daily Life

Household life in the Indo-Greek region involved the same spaces serving several practical needs: preparing food, storing crops, making or maintaining textiles and holding possessions. Excavations at Barikot in Swat and Sirkap near Taxila reveal parts of this material world. Objects associated with the second and first centuries BCE show local traditions continuing alongside equipment and imagery connected with the Hellenistic world.

These settlements lay within changing kingdoms in present-day Pakistan and the northwestern subcontinent. Their inhabitants drew supplies from nearby fields and from routes connecting towns. Tools and vessels connect those movements of goods with the repeated tasks of cooking, weaving and storage.

On this page5 sections

Towns, streets and domestic space

Sirkap was established near Taxila around the middle of the second century BCE. A main avenue and cross streets organised movement through the town, connecting blocks of buildings with a wider urban route. The settlement continued under Saka and Parthian rulers, and much of the architecture visible today belongs to those later phases.

Barikot developed below a rocky acropolis in the Swat valley. A substantial wall with projecting towers enclosed the town during the later second century BCE. The towers gave defenders positions from which to observe and protect the circuit; gates controlled entry into a settlement linked with fertile surrounding land. Building and maintaining the defences required stone, clay and organised labour.

Within such towns, household work depended on access to supplies and places to keep them. Containers, implements and fragments discarded during occupation reveal activities that a street plan cannot locate room by room. A vessel may outlast a political change, so its dated excavation context matters more than whether its decoration looks Greek.

Supporting pots over a fire

Excavations at Barikot have found portable pot supports in an Indo-Greek phase. These are known in Greek as lasana. A support held a vessel over a source of heat, leaving space beneath it for fuel and air. Moving the support allowed a cook to adjust the arrangement around a fire without needing a permanently built stove.

Such supports continued in use in the region after Indo-Greek rule. At Sirkap, comparable equipment belongs to later Saka-Parthian contexts. The Barikot finds establish the earlier local example, while the differing dates show how a useful device could remain in service across changes of government.

Coarse pottery from the early historic settlement includes substantial cooking and storage vessels. Blackening on rims and surfaces can record exposure to fire. Thick walls and sturdy shapes answered different demands from a fine drinking bowl: a cooking vessel had to withstand handling and repeated heating, while a storage jar needed capacity and a suitable opening.

Keeping and processing food

The Swat valley combined river water, fertile ground and a climate suited to crops grown in different seasons. Archaeobotanical research at Barikot has identified barley, wheat, rice and pulses across the settlement’s long pre-Kushan sequence. These finds place household provisioning within an established agricultural economy rather than a diet introduced by Greek kings.

Grain and pulses required several stages of work between harvest and eating. Dry produce had to be cleaned and stored; cereals might then be ground or cooked in water. Large jars helped keep supplies together and protected them from everyday disturbance. Their form can suggest storage, although the contents of an individual vessel require evidence beyond its shape.

The crop study covers centuries before and after Indo-Greek rule. It reveals a long-established agricultural landscape in which supplies reached households through recurring cycles of cultivation and processing. The combination of crops with different seasonal and water requirements called for decisions about sowing, irrigation and the allocation of labour.

Textiles and portable possessions

Pyramidal loom weights occur in the region’s late Hellenistic material culture. On a warp-weighted loom, weights hung from groups of vertical threads, the warp, to keep them taut. A weaver passed another thread, the weft, across them to build up cloth. Changing the arrangement of threads and the movement of the weft changed the fabric being made.

A warp-weighted loom needed a frame against which the vertical threads could hang. Weights kept bundles of those threads under tension as the cloth grew. The durable clay pieces often survive after the wooden structure and fabric have disappeared, preserving part of the working arrangement.

Small stone palettes from the wider Taxila region are commonly associated with cosmetics or grooming. Their carved scenes include figures drawn from Greek mythology as well as clothing and ornaments belonging to regional artistic conventions. The decorated surface made a portable object visually elaborate; the exact substances once placed on it are less securely established than its material and carving.

Skilled work and exchange

Cooking pottery, carved stone and coinage depended on different craft processes. Potters shaped and fired clay; stone carvers cut figures and compartments; mint workers struck metal blanks between engraved dies. These skills supplied objects that could travel beyond the place where they were made.

An Apollodotus I silver drachm in the Ashmolean collection illustrates the choices involved in currency production. It weighs 2.46 grams and follows an Indian weight standard, with an elephant and Greek inscription on one face and a humped bull and Prakrit inscription in Kharoshthi on the other. A denomination, or named unit of money, worked within a particular system of weights and payments.

Such money could accompany the movement of goods between towns and their surrounding districts. The domestic economy brought together agricultural supplies, containers and tools whose manufacture required experience. These ordinary operations continued as rulers and monetary issues changed.

For the wider setting, see Communities, Work and Urban Life in the Indo-Greek Kingdoms.