Of revenue without rulers: Public goods in the egalitarian cities of the Indus civilization   Adam S. Green1*   1Department of Archaeology, Faculty of Human, Social and Political Science, School of the Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom   Submitted to Journal:   Frontiers in Political Science   Specialty Section:   Comparative Governance   Article type:   Original Research Article   Manuscript ID:   823071   Received on:   26 Nov 2021   Revised on:   22 Mar 2022   Journal website link:   www.frontiersin.org In review http://www.frontiersin.org/       Conflict of interest statement   The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest       Author contribution statement   I wrote this article in its entirety.       Keywords   Archaeology, collective action, governance, South Asia, Revenue, bureaucracy, Urbanism, egalitarianism       Abstract Word count: 219   The archaeology of collective action addresses a widespread myth about the past–that premodern societies were despotic, and only produced public goods when everyday people convinced a separate and distinct ruling class to provide them. Archaeological evidence from the Indus civilization (~2600-1900 BC), home to the first cities in South Asia, reveals that Indus cities engaged in a remarkably egalitarian form of governance to coordinate different social groups, mobilize labor, and engage in collective action, thus producing a wide range of public goods. These public goods included, but were not limited to, water infrastructure, large public buildings, and urban planning–all of which helped Indus cities invent new technologies, grow, and thrive. Many intersecting institutions contributed to Indus governance, including civic bureaucracies that gathered the revenue necessary to mobilize labor in pursuit of collective aims, as well as guild-like organizations that coordinated the activities of numerous everyday communities and ensured the equitable distribution of information within Indus cities. A wide range of large and small public buildings, information technologies, and protocols for standardized craft production and construction attest to this egalitarian governance. Through these institutions, Indus governance incorporated the “voice” of everyday people, a feature of what Blanton and colleagues have described as good governance in the past, in absence of an elite class who could be meaningfully conceptualized as rulers.       Contribution to the field This manuscript aims to advance collective action theory by highlighting the emergence of public goods in absence of political elites. It also advances comparative archaeology by further integrating data from the Indus civilization into broader debates, and South Asian archaeology by presenting a new argument about an old dataset.           Ethics statements   Studies involving animal subjects Generated Statement: No animal studies are presented in this manuscript.       Studies involving human subjects Generated Statement: No human studies are presented in this manuscript.       Inclusion of identifiable human data Generated Statement: No potentially identifiable human images or data is presented in this study.       Data availability statement Generated Statement: Publicly available datasets were analyzed in this study. This data can be found here: www.archive.org.     In review Of revenue without rulers For Frontiers in Political Science 1 Of revenue without rulers: 1 Public goods in the egalitarian cities of the Indus civilization 2 3 Adam S. Green 4 Abstract: 5 The archaeology of collective action addresses a widespread myth about the past–that premodern 6 societies were despotic, and only produced public goods when everyday people convinced a separate and 7 distinct ruling class to provide them. Archaeological evidence from the Indus civilization (~2600-1900 8 BC), home to the first cities in South Asia, reveals that Indus cities engaged in a remarkably egalitarian 9 form of governance to coordinate different social groups, mobilize labor, and engage in collective action, 10 thus producing a wide range of public goods. These public goods included, but were not limited to, water 11 infrastructure, large public buildings, and urban planning–all of which helped Indus cities invent new 12 technologies, grow, and thrive. Many intersecting institutions contributed to Indus governance, including 13 civic bureaucracies that gathered the revenue necessary to mobilize labor in pursuit of collective aims, as 14 well as guild-like organizations that coordinated the activities of numerous everyday communities and 15 ensured the equitable distribution of information within Indus cities. A wide range of large and small 16 public buildings, information technologies, and protocols for standardized craft production and 17 construction attest to this egalitarian governance. Through these institutions, Indus governance 18 incorporated the “voice” of everyday people, a feature of what Blanton and colleagues have described as 19 good governance in the past, in absence of an elite class who could be meaningfully conceptualized as 20 rulers. 21 22 Introduction 23 24 Political theorists often assume that the benefits of governance only accrue to people who sacrifice their 25 political and economic power to a permanent ruling class. This assumption can lead the people of 26 otherwise democratic societies to tolerate political strategies that turn leaders into autocrats and shut 27 everyday people out of the political process. This is a “tripwire” that is well-known to political scientists 28 (Waldner & Lust 2018) and has also been addressed by archaeologists interested in the diversity of human 29 political systems (Blanton et al. 2021). Despite the efforts of these researchers, however, it remains a 30 pervasive myth that many transformative features of human economies come about only through the 31 canny largess of political-economic elites. 32 Archaeological evidence from the Indus civilization (~2600-1900 BC), home to the first cities in 33 South Asia, reveals that public goods emerged long before a ruling class. Indus cities supported a 34 sophisticated Bronze Age political economy, where growth was driven by diverse groups of people who 35 practiced different economic specializations, including intensified agropastoralism and craft production 36 (e.g. Kenoyer 1997a, Vidale 2000; Meadow & Patel 2003; Madella & Fuller 2006; Wright 2010; 37 Pokharia et al. 2014; Ratnagar 2016; Petrie & Bates 2017). It would be naïve to assume that the interests 38 of these communities were always aligned. It is not hard to imagine herders negotiating for better access 39 to land, artisans disagreeing over how many ornaments to make, or farmers debating a planting sequence 40 that distributes the demand for harvest labor. And yet, considering the range of potential conflicts that 41 could have atomized them, Indus communities nonetheless adopted forms of governance that allowed 42 them to accomplish extraordinary feats of social coordination, standardizing construction techniques and 43 planning urban development, assembling and maintaining drainage systems, constructing massive city 44 infrastructures that required the labor of thousands and creating systems of information that extended 45 from the foothills of the Himalaya to the Arabian Sea. 46 In review Of revenue without rulers For Frontiers in Political Science 2 The archaeology of the Indus civilization therefore challenges the widely-held myth that public 47 goods–those that benefit everyone who invests labor in their production as well as many who do not–must 48 be provisioned by rulers who are forced to accommodate citizen demand. Debate surrounding this 49 assumption has long shaped the interdisciplinary study of collective action and public goods (e.g. Olson 50 1965; Levi 1988; Ostrom 1990; North 1990). Evidence from the past in fact reveals that there are many 51 pathways to collective action (Blanton & Fargher 2008; Carballo 2013; Feinman & Carballo 2018), 52 reinforcing Ostrom’s (1990) critique of the conventional argument that societies only produce public 53 goods when everyday people place pressure on the elite (e.g. Levi 1988). People have in fact engaged in 54 collective action, often at very large scales, in societies where there are no elites to speak off. With access 55 to data from many such premodern societies, archaeologists are particularly well-positioned to address the 56 origins of public goods. Often, the publicness and privateness of goods can be inferred from the material 57 constraints to their use. The high accessibility of public goods contrasts with the restricted accessibility of 58 private goods, those that were constrained to a subset of people. Given that the people of the Indus built 59 their cities in absence of all but trivial inequality (Green 2021), it is worth asking: how did they 60 coordinate governance beyond households? How did everyday people make and implement political 61 decisions that resulted in forms of collective action that traditional political theories hold must be imposed 62 from above? In this article, I argue that civic deliberation and bureaucracy, as well as guild-like 63 organizations, were prominent features of Indus governance, incorporating significant proportions of 64 urban populations into collective decision making and implementation, allowing them to engage in 65 collective action without investing political authority within a fixed social stratum. The result was “good 66 governance,” that which responded to the needs of everyday people (sensu Blanton et al. 2021), over 67 much of the Indus civilization’s urban development. 68 69 What is evidence for good governance in the ancient past? 70 71 Governance is the way that a society directs its collective affairs. Across disciplines, many theorists hold 72 that governance is produced by the institutions that emerge from and cross-cut social groups, creating 73 rules, norms and practices that shape a society’s distribution of power and resources (e.g. Olson 1965; 74 North 1990; Ostrom 2000; Levi-Faur 2012; Bondarenko et al. 2020). Research on governance is often 75 biased toward contemporary or recent historical social contexts, however governance is a human 76 universal. It takes place within households and between nations. Different forms of governance produce 77 drastically different societies. When governance admits only a small number of people into decision-78 making, it tends to constrain the benefits collective action toward a small minority, a vicious cycle that is 79 enabled by and creates predatory and extractive social institutions (Acemoglu & Robinson 2013). By 80 contrast, “good governance,” a concept that began as the stated goal of international development, now 81 describes institutional arrangements that produce public goods, such as civic infrastructure, sanitation, 82 transportation, and other things considered essential for economic prosperity (Rothstein 2012). This 83 duality, as well as they key role governance plays in generating and dispersing political and economic 84 benefits–makes collective action theory a key tool for investigating it. 85 Collective action theory is concerned with identifying the conditions under which people 86 coordinate their labor to solve common problems. Public goods often involve substantial labor 87 investment, so making them tends to require collective action. However, collective action is often 88 implemented from the “top-down” by people who command considerable control of a society’s political 89 and economic resources, such as the agents of a state administration. There is therefore significant debate 90 about what kinds of agents and institutions are most likely achieve collective action within collective 91 action theory. Some theorists have focused on how “predatory” leaders muster revenues for collective 92 action (e.g. Levi 1988), while others argue that sustainable collective action is the produce of institutional 93 arrangements that draw upon knowledge and action at appropriate social scales (e.g. Ostrom 2010). The 94 latter theory builds on the observation that public goods emerge through coordination between a diverse 95 In review Of revenue without rulers For Frontiers in Political Science 3 range of intermediate and local institutions that often have non-hierarchical relationships to one another 96 and to the broader “state” (Ostrom 1990). In other words, good governance can emerge through 97 interactions enacted from the “top-down,” or through interactions from the “bottom-up” (Rothstein 2009; 98 2012). What seems to be essential is wide participation in the institution-formation process. Societies are 99 most likely to produce public goods when governance is inclusive, incorporating many everyday people 100 into directing collective affairs (e.g. Dahl 1989; Ostrom 1990, 45). 101 Evidence from the past reinforces these insights and offers a wide comparative frame that draws 102 on archaeology to more fully addressing variation in political forms (e.g. Blanton et al. 1996; Blanton 103 1998; Blanton & Fargher 2008; Blanton 2010; Carballo 2013; DeMarrais & Earle 2017; Feinman 2018; 104 Blanton et al. 2020; 2021). Initially, collective action theory helped advance critiques of neo-evolutionary 105 theory within the discipline of archaeology, contrasting the impact of corporate political strategies–those 106 that incorporated commoners in governance–from network political strategies that excluded commoners 107 and forged connections between elites (Blanton et al. 1996). As archaeological debate proceeded, it 108 became apparent that the evolutionary distinction between “commoner” and “elite” was not always useful 109 to understanding past social changes (Blanton 1998). Collective action theory offered an alternative 110 framework, revealing a political variable that had gone understudied in past societies, even though it was 111 clearly responsible for explaining many phenomena that were central to neo-evolutionary theory (Blanton 112 & Fargher 2008). Strong indicators of collective action included public goods–things like transportation 113 and water management infrastructures–but redistributive economies, equitable taxation, institutional 114 accountability, and bureaucratization (Blanton & Fargher 2008, 133–248). These phenomena were not 115 mutually exclusive and have been used to characterize the degree of collectivity apparent in past societies 116 (Feinman 2018; Feinman & Carballo 2018). This reframing has led to several important insights. For 117 example, it is clear that one of the long-term patterns that has emerged over the millennia has been steady 118 increases in different human societies’ capacity for collective action (Carballo 2013). Another insight is 119 that collective societies–those characterized by corporate political strategies–appear to have been more 120 dependent on “internal” sources of revenue like agrarian taxation, while less collective societies appear to 121 be those more dependent on exclusionary political strategies that focused on “external” resources 122 (Blanton & Fargher 2008; Feinman 2018; Feinman & Carballo 2018). Past societies that draw on internal 123 revenues to engage in collective action are more likely to produce public goods and can be predicted to 124 have developed institutions that enable wide participation and accountability in the political process 125 (Blanton et al. 2021). 126 But what kinds of institutional arrangements create good governance? A focus on institutions is 127 adaptable to evidence from the past because it eliminates the need to assume that a past institution was 128 public, private, market or state based. An institutional approach thereby helps archaeologists compare 129 different kinds of integrative, cross-cutting institutions that facilitated the mobilization of labor in the past 130 without imposing assumptions from the present (Holland-Lulewicz et al. 2020; Bondarenko et al. 2020). 131 Traditionally, archaeologists have theorized that such institutional arrangements were limited to “states,” 132 a social type used by neo-evolutionary theorists to describe a combination of extractive social classes and 133 predatory institutions thought to emerge alongside one another: institutions like militaries, big and 134 impersonal administrations, and long-distance exchange networks (e.g. Childe 1950; Weber 1978; 135 Flannery 1972; Service 1975; Wright & Johnson 1975). This definition of the state has been subject to 136 decades of critique by archaeologists, who must square it with evidence that different features commonly 137 associated with the state materialized in different social contexts at different times for different reasons 138 (e.g. Yoffee 2005; Pauketat 2007; Jennings 2016). Archaeologists now take pains to document the 139 different ways features of the neo-evolutionary state have been combined in the past (e.g. Wright 2002; 140 McIntosh 2005; Smith 2009; Feinman 2013; Jennings 2016). One recurring insight is that many of the 141 political interactions between the political institutions within “states” were often “heterarchical,” or 142 unranked, institutions (sensu Crumley 1995). This is not to say that political hierarchies were precluded 143 by heterarchical institutional arrangements, or that all political interactions were horizontally distributed. 144 Rather, heterarchical arrangements require archaeologists to think more broadly about political 145 organization. Like all complex systems, premodern societies often incorporated many intersecting 146 In review Of revenue without rulers For Frontiers in Political Science 4 institutions that were not always ranked or could be ranked in different ways. This flexibility probably 147 made some premodern societies more sustainable in the past (e.g. Scarborough 2009). Good governance 148 is not necessarily more heterarchical, but heterarchical institutional arrangements could certainly have 149 played a role in inclusive political decision-making and collective action in the past. 150 There have been many surprising instances of increases in political and economic scale that 151 unfolded without incurring more than trivial inequalities. Egalitarianism has therefore appeared in many 152 large-scale premodern societies that would have surprised neo-evolutionary theorists. This claim was 153 foreshadowed by Blanton (1998, 151), who argued that some early states employed egalitarian political 154 strategies. Egalitarian here does not mean perfect equality in all spheres of life, but rather a prevalence of 155 firm limits on exclusionary political power. Building on these points, I reiterate that elites or ruling 156 classes are not prerequisites to collective action or the production of public goods, but epiphenomena 157 associated with a restricted range of political-economic trajectories. Thus, rather than search for elite 158 agency to explain past social transformations, like the emergence of public goods, it is often more fruitful 159 to investigate the range of political arrangements people have made to engage in collective action 160 (Carballo 2013), examine connections between collective action and political economy (DeMarrais & 161 Earle 2017), and explore articulations between collective action and other indicators of governance 162 (Feinman & Carballo 2018). Governance activities in many past societies were often dispersed, and 163 emerged from the bottom-up (Thurston & Fernandez-Gotz 2021). In fact, I would add that by distributing 164 political and economic benefits among everyday communities, good governance can further be predicted 165 to contradict the expectations of neo-evolutionary theories of state formation by producing egalitarianism 166 in societies with coordinated governance and large-scale collective action. After all, if inequality and 167 government always increase together, then there would really be no such thing as good governance. 168 One advantage of this theoretical frame is that it can be used to make a range of predictions 169 regarding how good governance materialized in the past. In addition to reconstructing evidence of public 170 goods from past societies, I would suggest that good governance can be inferred from deliberative spaces 171 that help incorporate everyday people into political decision-making processes. There are other 172 archaeological indicators of governance as well. Blanton and Fargher (2008) argued that collective action 173 in the past is associated with a process called “bureaucratization.” This concept of bureaucratization 174 diverges from Max Weber’s (1978) evolutionary type, which holds that bureaucracy replaced tradition-175 based systems of administration only in the nineteenth century AD due to rising capitalism. 176 Bureaucratization, rather, can be conceptualized as the expanded implementation of governance into new 177 spheres of a political economy by specialists working on behalf of institutions that crosscut different 178 social groups–what Blanton and Fargher (2008:166) call “government by office.” An indicator of 179 bureaucratization is therefore the construction of institutional spaces set aside to facilitate the 180 implementation of coordinated governance and collective action. Thus, good governance is associated 181 both with the creation of deliberative spaces for accommodating citizen voice, and with “offices,” spaces 182 that help specialists coordinate the activities of multiple social groups by facilitated activities like 183 planning, organization, monitoring, and execution. 184 The initial formation of cities represents a profound challenge for good governance. Urban life is 185 defined by regular interactions amongst strangers (e.g. Jacobs 1961). The defining trait of many of the 186 world’s first cities were population aggregation that required novel forms of political and economic 187 organization (e.g. Smith 2003; Birch 2014; Jennings 2016; Gyucha 2019), as well as unprecedented 188 technological innovation and economic growth (e.g. Ortman & Lobo 2020; Green et al. forthcoming), 189 especially in their initial periods. Initial urban governance is demanding because urban communities faced 190 a wider range of social and economic conditions than their pre-urban predecessors, all of whom needed 191 public goods to prosper (e.g. Childe 1950; Fletcher 1995; Sherratt 1995; Wright 2002; Smith 2003; 192 Cowgill 2004; Feinman 2011; Ortman et al. 2016; Bettencourt et al. 2007; Smith 2019). The demand for 193 technologies that enable exchange amongst strangers–itself a public good–is closely associated with 194 changes in governance. Urban communities needed new tools to effectively keep track of credits and 195 debts amongst strangers. The tools and techniques employed to materialize and represent information, or 196 a society’s “means of specification” (Green 2020), can be distributed in different ways, and have major 197 In review Of revenue without rulers For Frontiers in Political Science 5 implications for governance. In egalitarian urban societies, we find the means of specification distributed 198 amongst everyday households, while in stratified societies with predatory institutions, these same 199 technologies were monopolized to create extractive forms of interest-bearing debt (Green 2020). 200 Likewise, collectivity produced a more widely distributed form of collective computation, while 201 authoritarianism limits the flow of information (e.g. Feinman & Carballo 2022). 202 203 What is the evidence for governance in the Indus civilization? 204 205 One of the world’s first great urbanizations produced the Indus civilization, whose settlements 206 emerged over an extensive area that extends from the Himalaya to the Arabian Sea (Fig. 1). The 207 geographical extent of the Indus civilization eclipsed that of its contemporary societies in Mesopotamia 208 and Egypt (Possehl 1999). People built Indus settlements within a wide range of environments, from the 209 semi-arid coasts of Gujarat to the well-watered plains of northwest India. Life in these contrasting regions 210 required a flexible and diversified agropastoral economy that responded to a wide variety of local 211 contexts (e.g. Weber 1999; Madella & Fuller 2006; Wright 2010; Chase 2010; Petrie et al. 2016; Petrie & 212 Bates 2017; Bates et al. 2017). Five Indus settlements are often identified as cities due to their size, 213 sophisticated Bronze Age technologies, numerous houses, and range of different kinds of structures. Four 214 of these sites, Harappa, Mohenjo-daro, Rakhigarhi and Dholavira, have been subject to extensive 215 excavations (see Lahiri 2005; Wright 2010; Petrie 2013a; Ratnagar 2016; Green 2021). Archaeological 216 surveys have also produced substantial data pertaining to the spatial organization of the smaller sites 217 immediately surrounding Harappa (Wright et al. 2003; 2005) and Rakhigarhi (Singh et al. 2010; 2011; 218 2018; in press; Green & Petrie 2018; Singh et al. 2019). Establishing the maximum extent of these sites is 219 a matter of ongoing debate, as there are many formation processes that impact area estimates. However, it 220 is clear that Indus cities were more extensive than the pre-urban settlements that emerged before them in 221 the same region. The extent of many of these pre-urban settlements cannot be established due to the 222 overlying remains of settlements that date to the urban phase. However, at Harappa (e.g. Meadow & 223 Kenoyer 2005) and Rakhigarhi (e.g. Nath 1998; 1999; 2001), pre-urban material culture is reported from 224 only around a quarter of the total site area. Moreover, settlements that were abandoned prior to 225 urbanization tended to be relatively small. Kot Diji, a type-site of the pre-urban phase, appears to have 226 extended over less than three hectares (Khan 1965). Most scholars would agree that the most densely built 227 part of each Indus city encompassed a core area that (often greatly) exceeded 50 hectares. Much of this 228 settlement area was dedicated to houses–domestic residential structures that incorporated courtyards, 229 wells, hearths, and sometimes specialized craft production areas (Sarcina 1979; Cork 2011; Green 2018). 230 The growth of Indus cities coincides with substantial evidence for changes in governance. 231 Indus governance can be inferred from different categories of archaeological evidence. For 232 example, substantial brick walls and platforms provide direct evidence of collective action, an outcome of 233 governance, because there would have been no way for a single household or social group to mobilize 234 sufficient labor on its own. Other forms of evidence are less direct. A hypothetical ledger detailing labor 235 obligations may record actual accumulations of past revenue or the aspirations of a presumptive 236 government whose desire for revenue was greater that its capacity to gather it (e.g. Richardson 2012). 237 Rules and protocols that crosscut social groups, and the institutions that form them, are perhaps the most 238 basic indicator of governance. However, unless such rules are written down, they do not leave direct 239 material evidence. At the same time, the repeated adherence to a standard of production can indirectly 240 attest to shared rules and protocols. And indeed, standardization has long been recognized as a basic 241 concept for the analysis of archaeological datasets (e.g. Rice 1991; Eerkens & Bettinger 2001; Roux 242 2003). The production of standardized artifacts is often taken as evidence that they were produced by a 243 group of specialists to meet the demands of a larger population of users. However, multiple groups of 244 specialists also often adhere to common standards, a pattern that we can use to infer governance of 245 production, especially when it cooccurs with evidence of collective action. 246 In review Of revenue without rulers For Frontiers in Political Science 6 Indus cities are recognizably “Indus” because the people who lived in them produced a shared 247 material culture. Indus assemblages include a wide range of shared ornament types, pottery styles, bronze 248 metallurgy, and stamp seals–technologies that have been subject to considerable study (Wright 1991; 249 1993; Kenoyer 1992; 1997a; Vidale 2000; Vidale & Miller 2000; Menon 2008; Agrawal 2009). While 250 assemblages from Indus cities tend to receive the most attention, they actually represent only a small 251 subset of the settlements that contributed to the Indus civilization’s material culture (Fairservis 1989; 252 Wright 2010; Sinopoli 2015; Parikh & Petrie 2019). Extensive archaeological surveys have uncovered 253 hundreds of small archaeological mounds across a very wide area (e.g. Singh 1981; Joshi et al. 1984; 254 Possehl 1999; Wright et al. 2003; 2005; Kumar 2009; Rajesh SV 2011; Pawar 2012; Chakrabarti 2014; 255 Dangi 2018; Green & Petrie 2018; Green et al. 2019). Indus cities therefore did not hold a monopoly on 256 these technologies, which were widely distributed across the civilization’s extent, and employed 257 alongside many local forms of craft production (Possehl & Herman 1990; Meadow & Kenoyer 1997; 258 Wright 2010; Chase et al. 2014; Parikh & Petrie 2016; Patel 2017; Petrie et al. 2018). Many of the pottery 259 and ornament styles that have been found in urban contexts have also been identified at these smaller 260 settlements, which were, in some cases, dozens of kilometers from the nearest urban center (Wright et al. 261 2003; 2005), a characteristic that Parikh and Petrie (2019) have characterized as “rural complexity.” 262 Governance is evident in the shared styles that permeated the production of many different Indus 263 crafts. Indus artisans made a lot of different kinds of things, from elaborate stone pillars to tiny steatite 264 microbeads (Wright 1991; Kenoyer 1997a; Vidale 2000; Miller 2007a). Though these crafts were 265 produced by multiple groups of artisans, many common standards patterned their production–shared ideas 266 and practices about how to make things, regardless of material (Miller 2007b; Wright 2010). For example, 267 Indus artisans often incorporated the same materials into different technologies, many of which had to be 268 acquired from locations far from the point of production (Lahiri 1990; Kenoyer 1997a; Ratnagar 2003). 269 While the use of exotic materials in urban contexts is not particularly remarkable, it is striking that Indus 270 artisans did not use all of the different sources of raw materials accessible within their civilization’s broad 271 extent. Artisans preferred–or were perhaps even constrained to–a limited number of specific sources of 272 stone, like steatite, even when local materials were more readily available (e.g. Law 2006; 2011). 273 Likewise, shared protocols for production patterned different crafts, resulting in a range of cross-craft 274 “technological styles” (Lechtman 1977; sensu Wright 1993). For example, Indus assemblages were 275 marked by considerable “technological virtuosity,” or crafts that incorporated very high levels of skill, 276 knowledge, and labor and invested these into small things, like portable beads and ornaments (Vidale & 277 Miller 2000). Likewise, a “talc-faience industrial complex” is evident across different crafts, a common 278 set of materials and techniques used produce exceptionally large quantities of artificial ornaments, such 279 steatite beads, and faience bangles, which were widely distributed amongst everyday people (Miller 280 2007a). Indus artisans also shared a proclivity for radically transforming raw materials, such as steatite 281 and carnelian, into new forms, and creating entirely artificial materials like stoneware or faience. Wright 282 (2010) has called this technological style a “transformative mindset.” Though many different groups 283 engaged in craft production, the technological styles that linked these groups reveals substantial 284 integration and suggests a degree of coordination among artisans that indirectly attests to a particular form 285 of governance. 286 Indus seals (Fig. 2) are a hallmark category of artifacts from the Indus civilization’s urban phase 287 (Mackay 1931; Rissman 1989; Parpola 1994; Franke-Vogt 1991; Kenoyer & Meadow 2010; Law 2006; 288 Kenoyer 2007; Green 2016; Jamison 2018). These small stone stamps had intaglio engravings that could 289 be impressed into clay sealings on containers and doors, materializing information that could serve as a 290 kind of record of socio-economic interactions, a practice that is attested across Eurasia beginning in the 291 Neolithic (e.g. Jarrige et al. 1995; Akkermans & Duistermaat 1996; Pittman 1995). The production of 292 Indus seals, themselves quite intricate, required high levels of skill and complex production sequences. 293 They epitomized Indus technological virtuosity as well as adherence to common standards, with a range 294 of standardized forms and images that were engraved on seal after seal (Rissman 1989; Ameri 2013; 295 Frenez 2018). Most Indus seal carvings depict an animal along with an inscription in an undeciphered 296 script (e.g. Mackay 1931). It has long been argued that such motifs served the emblems of different social 297 In review Of revenue without rulers For Frontiers in Political Science 7 groups, while the script records the name of a particular seal user (Fairservis 1982; Kenoyer 2000; Vidale 298 2005; Frenez & Vidale 2012; Frenez 2018). Regional variation in the prevalence of particular seal motifs 299 in an assemblage (e.g. Ameri 2013; Petrie et al. 2018) suggest that different kinds of social groups–rural 300 and urban–used seals to make sealings. And yet, the vast number of people who used Indus seals relied on 301 a remarkably standardized tool–a square stamp approximately 2.5cm on each side with a restricted range 302 of motifs–to specify things (Green 2015; 2020). 303 Stone weights are also a prominent component of Indus assemblages (Miller 2013). They formed 304 a system a measurement which would not have worked unless the weights were highly standardized, 305 incorporating weights that ranged from less than 1g to well over 10kg (Fig. 3). Indus weights were made 306 from a wider range of harder stones than seals, which nonetheless had to be sourced from the highlands 307 surrounding the Indus civilization (Law 2011). Many classic examples of Indus weights were cut from 308 chert from the Rohri Hills proximal to Sindh (Kenoyer 2010). Indus weights have been recovered in rural 309 as well as urban sites, suggesting that a single authority operated throughout the Indus civilization. The 310 spatial extent of the weight system has even been cited as evidence in proposals that the Indus civilization 311 was an empire (e.g. Ratnagar 2016), though it should again be noted that the Indus civilization lacks 312 convincing evidence of an emperor (Green 2021). Moreover, in contrast with the weight systems of the 313 Indus civilization’s contemporary societies in Mesopotamia–which do provide clear evidence of a ruling 314 class–Indus weights were unmarked, suggesting that they comprised a single system that did not compete 315 with any others across the Indus civilization’s vast extent (Rahmstorf 2020). Thus, in the Indus, it appears 316 to have been unnecessary for weight users to specify which weight system they were employing. Indus 317 weights were the only weights in many of the contexts in which they were used, suggesting very high 318 levels of coordination amongst the artisans who created the weights. 319 A closer look at the architectural matrix of Indus cities reveals the degree to which common 320 standards contributed to the growth of Indus settlements. While some Indus settlements were made of 321 stone, the majority were comprised structures assembled from thousands of mud or baked bricks. These 322 bricks had to be produced outside of the settlements themselves, mined from favorable sediments, 323 tempered, shaped, left to dry, and then sometimes fired in massive kilns. In describing the bricks of 324 Mound F at Harappa, Madho Sarap Vats (1940:21) writes: 325 Like all other buildings of the various strata, this amazing complex is composed of 326 well burnt bricks of fine texture which are laid throughout in good tenacious mud. The 327 bricks measure 11 by 5 ½ by 2 ½ by 3 in., of which the chief interest lies in the 328 scientific proportion of two widths to the length–a size of which makes for good 329 structural bonding. 330 The bricks at Mohenjo-daro adhere to the same ratio. Mackay (1931: 265) noted that comparable 331 brickmaking techniques did not appear in Mesopotamia until nearly a thousand years after their debut in 332 South Asia. The high quality and scale of Indus brick assemblages is clear evidence of mass production, 333 which would have required substantial coordination among a large number of brick producers. Adherence 334 to common standards made it possible for Indus builders to employ header-stretcher masonry techniques, 335 and create durable joints, tidy corners, and sharp lines (Fig. 4). Bricks could also be subdivided to create a 336 range of different kinds of platforms, staircases, vents, and other structural features. Common standards 337 also made it easier to create wedge-shaped variants that interlocked with other bricks and were essential 338 for the construction of waterproof wells (Jansen 1993a; Wright 2010). The high quality of Indus brick 339 masonry is one of the reasons so much of Mohenjo-daro’s architecture remain standing to be studied by 340 archaeologists today (e.g. Jansen 1993a; Rizvi et al. In Press). 341 The production activities considered thus far involved the coordination of labor from many 342 different households (e.g. Wright 1991). Guild-like organizations, which have been inferred from 343 evidence of technological virtuosity and decentralized production, likely contributed to the coordination 344 of different groups of artisans (e.g. Wright 2010, 327). Such organizations would have comprised an 345 integrating institution capable of producing, reproducing, consolidating, mobilizing, and preserving the 346 In review Of revenue without rulers For Frontiers in Political Science 8 knowledge and skill necessary to engage in different production activities. A similar model of Indus craft 347 organization was first suggested by Rissman (1989), who posited that the restricted range of seal motifs 348 found at different Indus cities revealed that multiple workshops operated independently of specific 349 locations of production. This model holds that production activities were undertaken by multiple 350 specialist groups who accumulated resources for the production and reproduction of the craft apart from 351 households, while also standardizing production practices. Groups of artisans specialized in different 352 techniques and shared their skills with one another, applying knowledge gained from the production of 353 one kind of craft to a range of different materials (Miller 2007a; 2007b). The result was a wide range of 354 highly standardized craft objects produced in very large numbers by many different groups of artisans. In 355 nearly every study of the spatial distribution of finished craft objects in Indus settlements (e.g. Vidale & 356 Balista 1988; Miller 2000; Wright et al. 2003; 2005), they are most often found everyday households–357 they were not meaningfully restricted. Interactions among guild-like organizations may help explain how 358 different technological styles emerged heterarchically or from the bottom-up. 359 Collective action leaves a robust material footprint. Detecting archaeological evidence of 360 collective action is straightforward–the archaeological record is full of big things that simply could not 361 have been built without the labor of many people. Prominent examples include the temple complexes at 362 Teotihuacán (e.g. Cowgill 2015), the monumental platforms in the early settlements along the Andes 363 coast (Pozorski & Pozorski 2018), Pepys’ pyramid in ancient Egypt (Wenke 2009) and the Temple Oval 364 at Khafajah in Mesopotamia (Delougaz 1940). Large non-residential structures were also built in the 365 Indus, providing direct evidence for collective action (e.g. Smith 2016; Wright 2016). Archaeologists 366 have identified many examples of such buildings, along with large-scale investments in infrastructure in 367 Indus settlements (Wright 2010). Examples include the massive structures of the Western Mound at 368 Mohenjo-daro, such as the Great Bath, and the erroneously named “Stupa” at Mohenjo-daro (Marshall 369 1931, 23). Detailed discussions of these structures are available in a range of studies (e.g. Fentress 1976; 370 Jansen 1993b; Verardi & Barba 2010; Vidale 2010). Like many of the large non-residential structures of 371 Mohenjo-daro, the Great Bath was built atop a massive brick platform (e.g. Jansen 1993a; Mosher 2017), 372 which would have demanded the investment of many hours of labor from many people. Possehl 373 (2002, 103) speculated that a single platform would have required 4 million days of labor. Even at 374 Harappa, where colonial British brick-mining activities destroyed much of the city’s architecture (Vats 375 1940, 17; Lahiri 2005), excavators reported substantial foundation platforms that could have supported 376 large nonresidential structures (Vats 1940, 12–17). The Harappa Archaeological Research Project has 377 revealed that massive, gated walls surrounded each of Harappa’s neighborhoods (Meadow & Kenoyer 378 1997; 2005; Wright 2010; Kenoyer 2012). Evidence of collective action has also been reported in plans of 379 excavations at Dholavira, which reveal the construction of city walls, gateways, and a series of 380 interconnected reservoirs that were cut deeply into the bedrock surrounding the city (Bisht 2005; 2015). 381 Archaeologists have also found large non-residential structures in the Indus civilization’s smaller 382 settlements, indicating that cities were not the only settlements that could muster labor for collective 383 action. Thick walls surround the smaller-scale sites of Surkotada (Joshi 1990), Kalibangan (Lal et al. 384 2015) and Kanmer (Kharakwal et al. 2012); and internally divided different parts of Banawali (Bisht 385 1987) and Bagasara (Bhan et al. 2004). A massive structure that could have served as a dock and another 386 that could have been used as a warehouse were constructed at Lothal (Rao 1973; 1979). Excavators have 387 identified smaller buildings dedicated to specialized production at Chanhu-daro (Mackay 1943; Sher & 388 Vidale 1985), and the brick platforms have been reported at the Harappa-satellite sites of Vainiwal 389 (Wright et al. 2003) and Lahoma Lal Tibba (Wright et al. 2005). Some of these structures rivaled those 390 constructed in the cities in terms of size and complexity and would likely have required the coordination 391 of labor from neighboring settlements. 392 Revenue is income expended through governance to undertake collective action. While buildings 393 with substantial storage capacities may serve as indirect evidence, direct inferences about past revenues 394 can rarely be made using archaeological evidence alone. Due to the vagaries of preservation, it is rare that 395 accumulations of resources can be directly associated with forestalled instances of administered collective 396 action. Most examples of storage spaces provide better evidence of household provisioning (Bogaard et 397 In review Of revenue without rulers For Frontiers in Political Science 9 al. 2009) or agrarian risk buffering (Halstead & O’Shea 2004), though these activities may not easily be 398 distinguished from past efforts to mobilize revenue. Seals and sealings can be used to make indirect 399 inferences about revenue. This is because seals and sealings were used to monitor claims on resources 400 held by different social groups (sensu Green 2020), allowing resources to remain physically distributed 401 throughout society in the form of reciprocal obligations amongst everyday people and other corporate 402 groups (e.g. Hayden 2020). This form of “virtual” revenue would have been predicated on the widespread 403 availability of information, which would only have been accessible through the means of specification. 404 Caches of materialized information–in the form of clay “sealings” impressed with seals–attest to efforts to 405 record information about resource accumulation and expenditure. Similar technologies have been 406 recovered from other early contexts in the Middle East and South Asia, where they are often considered 407 evidence of “administration” (e.g. Ferioli & Fiandra 1983; Frangipane 2007; Duistermaat 2012; Ameri et 408 al. 2018). Indus assemblages reveal a clear concern with such forms of revenue. A cache of 409 approximately 90 sealings attest to their use in a system of monitoring access to different kinds of lockers, 410 containers, and structures at Lothal (Frenez & Tosi 2005). This capacity to materialize information was 411 remarkably widespread. Thousands of Indus seals, tools that allowed people to make sealings, have been 412 recovered from sites located throughout the civilization’s extent (e.g. Joshi & Parpola 1987; Shah & 413 Parpola 1991; Parpola et al. 2010). More than 1,000 seals were recovered from the excavated areas of 414 Mohenjo-daro alone (e.g. Mackay 1931; 1938), and the vast majority of Indus seals were recovered from 415 everyday households, not large nonresidential structures (Franke-Vogt 1991; Green 2020). The 416 distribution of seals likely reflects the distribution of control over resources, especially the internal 417 resources of concern to everyday households, clearly situating the Indus on the collective side of the 418 governance continuum and deeply embedding the “voice” of everyday households into its governance. 419 Indus weights similarly reveal a strong concern with revenue. They have been recovered in 420 smaller numbers than seals, and they may have been employed in taxation. At Harappa, weights have 421 been found in association with the gateway to one of the city’s neighborhoods (Kenoyer & Miller 2007). 422 This association has only been preliminarily reported and does not appear to prevail across Indus sites, 423 some of which did not have neighborhood walls or gates. What could have been taxed, and by whom, 424 remains an open question. Still, seals and weights both reveal a common concern with monitoring 425 economic transactions and keeping track of resources, and both would clearly have been useful in 426 mobilizing revenue for collective action. 427 Deliberation is a key element of governance. Here I use the term in its widest sense to refer to a 428 full range of group decision-making practices; everything from discussions among leaders to public 429 rituals designed to build collective consensus. It is easier to deliberate when there are spaces available for 430 people to meet. Thus, the more space a society sets aside for deliberation, the more people can participate 431 in its governance, and the greater the likelihood that everyday people will be able to agree to a particular 432 course of collective action (e.g. Carballo 2013; DeMarrais 2016). Excepting palaces and temples, the 433 wide range of different kinds of common spaces that past people have built to accommodate deliberation 434 has not received adequate attention. Archaeologists argue that many societies incorporate public spaces 435 that facilitate governance activities like deliberation. Drawing on settlement scaling theory (e.g. Ortman et 436 al. 2016), Norwood and Smith (2021) hypothesized that “urban open space” may increase at a higher rate 437 than population, though add that the kinds of open spaces established may be culture-specific. Blanton 438 and Fargher (2008) have long argued that large public buildings associated with deliberation are an 439 indicator of collective action in a premodern society, and of good governance (Blanton et al. 2021). 440 Feinman and Carballo (2022, 101; see also 2018) have further specified that communal or large-scale 441 “…architecture that fosters access (e.g. open plazas, wide accessways, and community temples)” is a 442 strong indicator of collectivity. As good governance is implemented at increasing socio-economic scales, 443 so too does demand for deliberative spaces. 444 Mohenjo-daro’s large non-residential structures were largely unwalled, widely accessible, and 445 featured large open spaces. As a result, many scholars have argued that they served a range of “public” 446 purposes (e.g. Jansen 1993b; Possehl 2002; Vidale 2010; Wright 2010; Smith 2016). Their accessibility, 447 enhanced by their numerous entrances and location on wide public streets, fits the criteria for public 448 In review Of revenue without rulers For Frontiers in Political Science 10 spaces defined by Hilliard and Hansen (1984). Such spaces provided fertile ground for many people to 449 engage in deliberation. The “Pillared Hall” at Mohenjo-daro (Fig. 5) is one of the only structures that is 450 regularly included in speculation about the Indus civilization’s political process (e.g. Possehl 2002), 451 including by authors who suggest that Indus palaces have simply so far evaded the trowel (e.g. Kenoyer 452 1998; Ratnagar 2016). The structure was spacious, measuring more than 30 meters to a side, and boasted 453 at least 20 brick pillars that could have supported a high ceiling (Marshall 1931, Mackay 1931: 159-161). 454 It had paved brick walks and walls that were interspersed with gypsum, which would have brightened the 455 space. Confounding early excavators, who compared the structure with courts from later Buddhist periods 456 (Marshall 1931:24), it lacked benches, simply providing a large, enclosed space that could have 457 accommodated hundreds of people. Indus cities are full of other clearings, yards, and similarly open 458 spaces that could have provided places to deliberate. Such a clearing fills the northeast quadrant of 459 Harappa (Meadow & Kenoyer 2005), and Mohenjo-daro’s mounds are separated by spaces that appear to 460 have been deliberately left unoccupied (Wright 2010). Dholavira has an extensive clearing enclosed 461 within its walls (Bisht 2015). Open spaces within urban settlements may also, of course, result from site 462 formation processes. Unfortunately, such spaces rarely attract the attention from excavators that would be 463 needed to narrow down our understanding of their use. Future geophysical investigations at Indus sites 464 could help address this problem. For now, such features remain good candidates for deliberative spaces, 465 even if we are unsure of the specific form that deliberation took. 466 Bureaucratization also impacts the way people use space. I argued above that it leads to the 467 construction of “offices,” here defined as institutional spaces that facilitate administrative activities that 468 crosscut and integrate social groups. Such institutional spaces are distinct from deliberative spaces in that 469 they are dedicated to the implementation of governance and not necessarily the production of consensus. 470 Interspersed among the houses of Mohenjo-daro were small structures that clearly were not houses. Two 471 examples are the “hostel” and “letter-writers’ office” that were reported in Mackay’s (1938) excavation 472 campaign at Mohenjo-daro. In a previous study, I argued that these were “small public structures,” 473 constructed, further opened to the public streets in later construction phases, and expanded over the 474 course of Mohenjo-daro’s urban development (e.g. Green 2018). These small public structures could have 475 facilitated bureaucratic activities that could not be undertaken within houses. They were widely accessible 476 and positioned adjacent to a major public intersection, indicating these activities were likely public in 477 nature. Small public structures are undertheorized in archaeology, and there are understudied analogues in 478 other archaeological contexts (e.g. Seibert 2006). They could have played important role in implementing 479 governance. Offices allow people to monitor, regulate, and shape activities at an institutional scale. This 480 is why the small public structures of Mohenjo-daro had good access to the streets but were not 481 constrained by a particular household or neighborhood (Green 2018). 482 Infrastructures–road networks, city plans, walls, common storage facilities–materialize collective 483 aims (e.g. Wilkinson 2019) and thus provide convincing, if indirect, evidence of different forms of 484 governance. Good examples of infrastructure are the terraces surrounding Monte Albán (Feinman & 485 Nicholas 2012), water transport systems among the Maya (Halperin et al. 2019) or Mesopotamian 486 communities (Jotheri et al. 2019). So too was evidence of widespread faithfulness to street plans (Fig. 6). 487 Infrastructures are built up through many episodes of construction, each of which builds on and adapts to 488 the standards applied in previous episodes, back to initial construction. Such sequences of construction 489 coordinated the collective action of people separated by time and by space. Mohenjo-daro’s 490 neighborhoods, each atop a substantial brick platform, were arranged along wide streets that ran from 491 north to south and were intersected by narrow lanes that ran from east to west (Mackay 1938; Marshall 492 1931; Jansen 1978). It is striking that among the interconnected structures of Mohenjo-daro’s 493 neighborhoods, which changed dramatically through time (e.g. Mackay 1938; Jansen 1993b; 1993a; 494 Vidale 2010; Green 2018; Rizvi et al. In Press), the spatial integrity of many streets was nonetheless 495 honored over the course of many episodes of building construction. Each episode of house construction 496 re-established Mohenjo-daro’s infrastructure. As Indus communities built and renovated their houses, 497 they often remained careful not to impinge on streets, which presumably served the transportation needs 498 of their settlements. In contrast, smaller lanes, which physically constrained access to houses, faced no 499 In review Of revenue without rulers For Frontiers in Political Science 11 such constraint, shifting in location from building episode to building episode. The episodic maintenance 500 and modification of houses is important because Indus scholars generally agree that house construction 501 was not carried out by civic authorities, but by the members of individual households, or by 502 neighborhoods (Jansen 1993b; Wright 2010; Kenoyer 2012). The same pattern structured Mohenjo-daro’s 503 drainage system, which included wells, pipes, gutters, and “soaks” that drained water from private bathing 504 platforms within individual households (e.g. Jansen 1993a; Rizvi 2011; Wright & Garrett 2017). As with 505 lanes, households likely constructed pipes that connected their bathing platform to the city’s drains, which 506 were located at regular spatial intervals in the wide public streets. Open streets and drainage both 507 comprised public goods (Fig. 6), and elements of both kinds of infrastructure have also been revealed at 508 numerous smaller Indus settlements, such as Kalibangan (Lal et al. 2015) and Farmana (Shinde et al. 509 2011). 510 The interactions between Indus neighborhoods that would have facilitated these developments 511 have often been labeled heterarchical. Indeed, the interactions between guild-like organizations, 512 households, neighborhoods, and different Indus sites would likely have been unranked. With regard to 513 urban growth, the thinking goes that different heterarchical social groups–neighborhoods, corporate 514 groups, households–managed their affairs independently of one another (Possehl 2002; Kenoyer & Miller 515 2007; Wright 2010; Vidale 2010). Vidale (2018) offered an expanded version of this model, positing that 516 Indus heterarchy was analogous to competition between groups of elites evident in Medieval Genoa. 517 However, accepting this interpretation requires us to make the unfounded assumption that Indus cities 518 were stratified, forcing Indus evidence into an outdated neo-evolutionary model, and obscuring the 519 persistence of egalitarianism in the past (Green 2021). Better to suppose that neighborhood and household 520 groups likely exerted polycentric forms of authority on the urban environment (Petrie 2013b) than to 521 force archaeological evidence from the Indus into an a flawed, neo-evolutionary model of state formation. 522 Moreover, it is also unlikely that heterarchical interactions between different institutions can fully explain 523 the growth of Indus cities. Indus governance also incorporated institutional spaces capable of mobilizing 524 large quantities of revenue and managing its use, mobilizing labor at large scales. However, there is no 525 evidence that the specialists who occupied such offices belonged to a different class than the households 526 from which they coordinated labor. 527 528 Was Indus governance good? 529 530 Most debate surrounding the Indus civilization’s political organization has focused on whether or not the 531 Indus civilization was a “state”, and if it was, what kind (e.g. Fairservis 1961; Wheeler 1968; Fairservis 532 1989; Kenoyer 1994; 1997b; Lal 1997; Possehl 1982; 1998; 2002; Dhavalikar 2002; Agrawal 2007; 533 Ratnagar 1991; 2016; Wright 2010; 2016; Shinde 2016; Petrie 2013a; 2019; Chakrabarti 2014; Sinopoli 534 2015). Scholars have variously described Indus political forms as city-states, domains, and some even 535 suspect that it was an empire. Many of these interpretations hinge on the degree of elite agency a 536 particular archaeologist is willing to infer from the archaeological evidence. Noting that the Indus lacked 537 palaces, exclusionary temples, tombs, and aggrandizing monuments that archaeologists can use to infer 538 the presence of a ruling class, I have argued elsewhere that we need to explain political and economic 539 transformations in the Indus without invoking elite agency (Green 2021). This position leads to the 540 question: How do egalitarian urban societies govern themselves? 541 It is surprisingly straightforward to outline an answer. Egalitarian governance is likely to have 542 incorporated many of the same institutional characteristics neo-evolutionary theorists would have 543 confined to despotic states. Egalitarian governance mobilizes collective action that produces public goods, 544 such as economic legibility, civic organization, or environmental management–all things that are broadly 545 usable to most if not all of the people in a society. Examples of collective action in the Indus attest to the 546 construction of buildings that served common goals that crosscut many social groups–public buildings or 547 infrastructure that benefited everyone–not an exclusionary ruling class. Beyond collective action, Indus 548 In review Of revenue without rulers For Frontiers in Political Science 12 governance coordinated the activities of everyday households and was oriented toward producing public 549 benefits. Street plans, drainage systems, and standards of recording and measurement all attest to the use 550 of revenues to create goods in response to collective needs. Evidence from the Indus civilization therefore 551 indicates that the governance of its cities was good, especially during the phase(s) that have left the most 552 pronounced material footprints. 553 Potential revenues for funding public goods likely increased with the economic specialization and 554 intensification that is well-attested in archaeological evidence from Indus cities (Wright 2010). These 555 economic resources were widely distributed throughout Indus society using weights and seals, not 556 dissimilar to the patterns of craft production and use evident at Monte Albán (Nicholas & Feinman 2022). 557 Indus seals and sealings comprised a coherent and distributed system of monitoring information–one that 558 was governed, but also emergent, and likely played a key role in making economic transactions legible 559 across social boundaries, another public good. Indus seals would have facilitated the collection of 560 revenues, which, by extension, may have existed in a state of social dispersal until needed for collective 561 action, and episodes of revenue collection may have been task-oriented and ephemeral. However, the 562 widespread availability of the means of specification, and thus access to information, prevented the 563 monopolization of revenues and predatory extraction of value from one corporate group by another (e.g. 564 Green 2020). The political decision-making process necessary to set objectives for revenue expenditure 565 likely occurred, at least in part, in deliberative spaces, which provided one potential mechanism for 566 resolving conflicts, setting agendas, and making plans, through mass participation. This is not to say that 567 every occupant of each Indus city weighed in on every collective decision, but such structures could have 568 allowed a great many voices to be included in the discussion. Nor were deliberative spaces the only 569 avenue to collective decision-making. Guild-like organizations and technological standardization almost 570 certainly came about through many instances of interaction among craftspeople. The deliberative process 571 no doubt benefited from the distribution of information within Indus society–seals and sealings 572 effectively democratized revenue data. 573 Offices provided the capacity to implement political decisions. The small public structures of 574 Mohenjo-daro’s eastern mounds are a prime example of institutional spaces for the implementation of 575 governance (Green 2018), but platforms like those recorded at Lothal, Harappa, and even smaller sites 576 like Vainiwal could have served a similar purpose. These institutional spaces were not under the control 577 of a single household or neighborhood, and the people who mobilized labor through them may have been 578 temporary appointees from different households in place to carry out tasks. The sophistication of the 579 projects they appear to have coordinated suggests they amassed considerable skill and knowledge while 580 eschewing material benefits that exceeded those available to other people in the city. Here, too, a 581 democratized means of specification likely played a key role. The wide availability of information could 582 have served as a check on any effort to direct revenue toward projects that permanently increase the 583 political or economic status of a subset of people. It is much easier to achieve the equitable taxation of 584 internal resources if everyday people are in full possession of information about their contribution to 585 collective endeavors. Offices likely helped develop the protocols required to produce and reproduce the 586 physical matrix of Indus life, such as the brickmaking standards that were necessary to build the 587 structures we recognize as Indus. This relationship between deliberative and institutional space outlines a 588 potential comparative lesson for archaeology. Both deliberative and institutional spaces were essential to 589 good government, though the features of both will vary depending on the specific institutions involved in 590 governance. The ratio of offices to deliberative spaces may provide insights into how good a government 591 was in the past. When deliberative spaces are as prevalent as institutional spaces, we can infer that 592 governance was more responsive to everyday communities. Collective action, revenue, and deliberative 593 and institutional spaces are therefore interlinked within systems of governance. Each of these elements of 594 governance is attested to directly or indirectly by archaeological evidence. 595 The theory of egalitarian governance I have outlined here reinforces the idea that governance is 596 fairest and most sustainable when it emerges from within the groups being governed. Ostrom (1990; 597 2009; 2010) has long held that the people who govern best are those closest to the resource being 598 governed. The people who use a common resource must trust one another, set the rules for its governance, 599 In review Of revenue without rulers For Frontiers in Political Science 13 and monitor one another to ensure those rules are followed. What if the “commons” being governed is 600 public revenue itself? Given that revenue emerges from all the constituents in a political system, does it 601 not follow that collective action is best achieved through the widespread participation in governance? 602 While Ostrom’s model has long problematized the idea that “rulers” are the ones best positioned to 603 govern revenue, the Indus extends collective action theory because it provides a concrete example of 604 revenue without rulers, contradicting the myth that revenue only exists when it is captured by rulers. 605 Why is the potential that an early urban society governed itself without a ruling class so 606 challenging to political theory? After all, democratic deliberation, inclusive political processes, and 607 checks on the concentration of political authority are ideals to which many governments today aspire. 608 Task rotations, elections, and term limits are used now to serve to limit the concentration of political and 609 economic power within a specific social stratum. Rulers are non-essential to many of the supposed 610 outputs of good governance, and “non-elites” or everyday people often spearhead political actions in later 611 societies (Thurston, this special topic). Fiscal systems, which require revenue, are evident in politically 612 decentralized as well as centralized societies (Tan, this special topic). Perhaps it is because many 613 contemporary (and especially Western) narratives of political change are implicitly self-congratulatory, 614 and want to see them reinforced in the origin stories of today’s nation-state (Blanton et al. 2020). It was 615 by no means pre-ordained that a ruling class would come to monopolize political decision making. 616 Indeed, the opposite would more likely be the case. After all reciprocity is a human universal (Mauss 617 1925; Sahlins 1972; Bowles & Gintis 2013), so it is unsurprising that the archaeological record records a 618 concern for fairness through deep time (Jennings 2021). 619 Conclusions 620 621 In this article, I have argued against the assumption that public goods can only be gained by surrendering 622 political agency to a ruling class. Addressing this issue is essential if we want to increase our 623 understanding of good governance, which coordinates collective action for the benefit of everyday people 624 (Blanton et al. 2021). The archaeology of the Indus civilization supports this strong association between 625 collective action and good governance, and between good governance and egalitarianism. In the Indus, 626 there is evidence that many different social groups coordinated their activities from the bottom-up and top 627 down. Indus communities adhered to common standards in craft production and construction, which 628 likely emerged through interactions between different households, neighborhoods, and guild-like 629 organizations. Access to information, such as that which could be materialized using seals and sealings, 630 was democratized, allowing substantial revenues to exist in a state of dispersal ensuring that political 631 decision-making took many voices into account. However, Indus governance also incorporated 632 institutions that facilitated mass deliberation and implementation, such as structures and spaces that could 633 have facilitated deliberation and the implementation of collective aims. Bureaucratic institutions, such as 634 civic authorities, that likely organized collective action at large scales to produce certain public goods, 635 like large nonresidential buildings, foundation platforms, and street plans, that were necessary for Indus 636 cities to grow and thrive. In conclusion, I reiterate the arguments advanced by the other authors in this 637 special topic that good governance is not limited to modern societies. The archaeology of the Indus 638 civilization encourages us to further question the agency of rulers to the creation of public goods and 639 consider the implications of the apparent linkage between good governance and egalitarian social 640 organization. 641 642 Acknowledgements 643 644 I would like to thank Richard Blanton, Gary Feinman, Stephan Kowalewksi and Lane Fargher for the 645 invitation to participate in this special topic, as well as the other contributors for their insights into 646 governance in a wide variety of past contexts. They have created an ideal space for comparing patterns 647 In review Of revenue without rulers For Frontiers in Political Science 14 from the past that have strong implications for how we organize our own societies. I would also like to 648 thank the four anonymous reviewers who helped me improve this paper. Cameron Petrie, Darryl 649 Wilkinson, and Toby Wilkinson provided helpful comments on an early draft, and my ongoing 650 conversations with Rekha Bhangaonkar, Shailaja Fennell, Tom Leppard, and Nancy Highcock helped me 651 to shape the ideas presented here. I am also grateful for conversations with Uzma Rizvi and the 652 Laboratory for Integrated Archaeological Visualization and Heritage research group for conversations 653 about reconstructing and visualizing structures identified in the early reports at Mohenjo-daro. I would 654 like to acknowledge Rita Wright and Sneh Patel, with whom I have been discussing elements of this 655 argument for a decade. This article incorporates ideas I developed while working on the TwoRains 656 project, which was funded by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 657 research and innovation program, grant agreement no. 648609 and the Global Challenges Research 658 Fund’s TIGR2ESS (Transforming India’s Green Revolution by Research and Empowerment for 659 Sustainable food Supplies) Project, Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council grant 660 number BB/P027970/1. I wrote this article as an Affiliated Lecturer in the Department of Archaeology 661 and as a Research Associate at King’s College, University of Cambridge. This research was made 662 possible thanks to the ongoing support of Lillian, Henry, and Isaac Green. Any faults in the article’s text 663 or argument are entirely my own. 664 Works Cited 665 666 Acemoglu, D. & J.A. Robinson, 2013. Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty. 667 London: Profile Books. 668 Agrawal, D.P., 2007. 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Myths of the Archaic State Evolution of the Earliest Cities, States, and Civilizations. 1147 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1148 1149 Figure Captions 1150 1151 Figure 1: Map of the Indus civilization during its urban phase. Included are the sites that are often 1152 presented as cities, as well as smaller settlements that are discussed in this article, where archaeologists 1153 have found substantial evidence of collective action. Map assembled using QGIS 3.16 (www.qgis.org) 1154 and employs a Nature Earth basemap (www.naturalearth.com). 1155 1156 Figure 2: A sample of seals from the Indus civilization. Reprinted from Green (2020) with gratitude to the 1157 Archaeological Survey of India. A: unicorn (M-143|63.10/23, DK 10323), B: buffalo (M-128|63.10/18, 1158 DK 8390), C: rhinoceros (M-276|63.10/149, DK 4812), D: elephant (M-279|63.10/27, DK 7675), E: 1159 short-horned bull (M-251|63.10/44, DK 5791), F: figure in tree with tiger (M- 310|63.10/184, DK 5969), 1160 G: seated figure (M-305|63.10/62, DK 3882), H: zebu bull (M-261|63.10/133, DK 8390), I: human/animal 1161 composite (K-50|68.1/8). All of these seals are curated in the Central Antiquities collection of the 1162 Archaeological Survey of India and were photographed by the author. 1163 1164 Figure 3: Weights from the Indus civilization. These weights were excavated from Mohenjo-daro and are 1165 curated by the British Museum. © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative 1166 Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share-Alike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license. 1167 1168 Figure 4: Masonry techniques employed at Mohenjo-daro that highlights the sophistication of the brick-1169 making technology. Illustration redrawn from Marshall 1931: LXVII. Plans from Marshall (1931) and 1170 Mackay (1938) were digitized and extrapolated in three dimensions using QGIS 3.16 (www.qgis.org). 1171 Images is projected over Google Earth Satellite Imagery (accessed 2021). 1172 1173 Figure 5: Map and reconstruction of the “Pillared Hall” from Mohenjo-daro. Plans from Marshall (1931) 1174 and Mackay (1938) were digitized and extrapolated in three dimensions using QGIS 3.16 1175 (www.qgis.org). Images is projected over Google Earth Satellite Imagery (accessed 2021). 1176 1177 Figure 6: Map of Street and Drainage Plans from HR and VS Area at Mohenjo-daro. Plans from Marshall 1178 (1931) and Mackay (1938) were digitized and extrapolated in three dimensions using QGIS 3.16 1179 (www.qgis.org). Images is projected over Google Earth Satellite Imagery (accessed 2021). 1180 In review Figure 1.TIF In review Figure 2.JPEG In review Figure 3.JPEG In review Figure 4.TIF In review Figure 5.TIF In review Figure 6.TIF In review