Engineering Feats and Consequences: Workers in the Night and the Indus Civilization

Nighttime and darkness are intangible concepts that leave few physical traces (except perhaps archaeological depictions of night skies). Indeed to suggest that certain activities would be inherently nighttime activities is anthropologically problematic, in that it assumes an environmental determinism governing human behavior. The very concepts of night and day themselves are social constructs, and as archaeologists we cannot assume that past cultures would have made a similar distinctive dichotomy. However, despite the challenges presented in doing an archaeology of the night, it is eminently a worthwhile process. Certainly the acute development of human vision encourages a focus on those groups