Sewers

In 1973 the Hearst Museum received a small figurine of a bull and a miniature pot. They date to around 2,500 B.C. and are two of six similarly small objects collected in 1935 by a U.C. linguistics professor at Chanhu-daro, Pakistan. That was also the year the ancient mound was excavated for the first time. Chanhu-daro, along with Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, is one of the urban settlements of what is known as the Indus Civilization, which flourished between modern day Pakistan and Western India during the Bronze age (3,600-1,200 B.C.).

Hearst Museum # 9-12204
figurine of a bull, clay
Asia, Pakistan, Indus Valley, Chanhu-daro
Collected (purchased) by Murray B. Emaneau

Despite all efforts, Indus texts remain unreadable, but archaeological evidence tells us that cities like Chanhu-daro were well-planned, capable of sheltering additional populations from nearby towns when needed. By the 3rd millennium B.C., its citizens enjoyed a carefully planned and laid out drainage system that served all the houses in the city. Toilets! The 1937 publication indicates that small objects were occasionally found in the ancient plumbing, but nothing of great value to the residents. Lodged in one cesspit, however, a human skull was found, prompting the researcher to suggest that the individual was evidently murdered and his head disposed in a 'hard-to-find' place.

Hearst Museum # 9-12208
Miniature clay jar, traces of red paint on exterior
Asia, Pakistan, Indus Valley, Chanhu-daro
Collected (purchased) by Murray B. Emaneau

Chanhu-daro didn't grow as big as other urban centers, yet it was home to thousands of men and women living in rather close quarters. A certain level of violence is certainly to be expected, but new research published by the National Geographic indicate that, by the 2nd millennium B.C., high numbers of individuals suffered serious injuries or death by violent means. This stands in apparent contrast with the classic Indus iconography, which lacks images of war, soldiers, or killing.

A different kind of violence, however, led many of these cities to be slowly abandoned. Flooding episodes of the Indus river caused damage to walls, streets, and other infrastructure.  At least five major inundations forced the abandonment of the city for long periods of time, and the last group to settle on the mound in 2000 B.C. had little in common with the original Harappan population.

Quartz

These quartzite tools (a core, a truncation and a geometric) were collected between 1964 and 1965 at Dindori 3, a site along the banks of the Narmada River, India. The tools are included in a sizable collection of paleolithic implements from about 30 discrete localities in the Narmada Valley in India. The archaeological expedition was organized by Theodore D. McCown and one of his students, George V. Shkurkin. Sadly it would be McCown's last field season as he passed away in 1969 after more than 30 years at UC Berkeley, first as a student and later as faculty and museum curator. The collections were then accessioned to the PAHMA and used by prof. J. Desmond Clark (and others) for teaching and research. Professor Clark went himself on archaeological expeditions in India in the 1980's.
Another prominent UC Berkeley anthropologist, Sherwood Washburn, recalled how McCown was convinced that the testing ground to understand human evolution laid to the east. The land between Palestine, where his father worked as biblical archaeologist, and India was where he thought Dryopithecines had space and time to develop the variations that eventually led to modern apes and humans.
Below is what McCown wrote to campus administrators prior to his leave of absence from the university: 
The purpose of my sabbatic leave is to spend from October 1964 to May 1965 in India, investigating and excavating Pleistocene localities containing assemblages of paleolithic tools and/or fossil fauna materials. The principal localities to be tested lie in the central and eastern parts of the state of Madhya Pradesh between the town of Hosangabad and Jubbulpore. The area is one I visited and surveyed during five weeks in the spring and summer of 1958 on sabbatic leave from the University. A number of promising localities were visited, but it became obvious that the main stream of the Narmada River poses problems whose solutions will have to be sought along the tributary systems running it from Vindhya mountains to the north and the Satpuras to the south. No systematic investigation has been made of the remnants of the terrace system, especially where they have been dissected by the Narmada's tributaries.

Hearst Museum #9-10093; 9-10074; 9-10072

India; Madhya Pradesh; Narmada valley; Dindori 3

Collected by Theodore D. McCown and George V. Shkurkin, 1964-1965

Neanderthal flint

Dorothy A.E. Garrod was the first woman (1939) to be elected Professor of Archaeology at Cambridge. Her career started in the early 1920's and brought her from Gibraltar, to the east Mediterranean, to Kurdistan. 

Arguably, her most important achievement in the field is the excavation at Mount Carmel where, among thousands of stone tools, she recovered the first Neanderthal burials outside Europe. During the 1931 season Garrod was assisted by Theodore D. McCown, a PhD student at UC Berkeley, who later served as a curator for the museum between 1947 and 1957.

The excavation of the Mt. Carmel caves lasted a few years and the results were published in a large volume in 1939. As was customary for those times, the lithic collections were then split among numerous institutions around the world. Here is a list of all the places one should travel if interested in these assemblages.

Through the study of the skeletal remains and animal bones, Garrod and McCown offered early reconstructions of the changes in the environment from the Middle Paleolithic to the early Neolithic in the Near East.  Reporting on their findings in 1934, The Pittsburgh Press points out that the region was home to the Neanderthals from the early Mousterian until their final demise. The short article doesn't provide any details as to how or why the brutes went eventually extinct but it offers an interesting choice of words to describe their character while they were alive and roaming around: Neanderthals were uncouth and clumsy. 

Think twice before inviting a Neanderthal to a formal dinner: they will probably show up unshaved, half naked, and they will leave all their food scraps on your floor.

Hearst Museum # 9-1286

Acheuleo-Mousterian flint

Palestine; Mt. Carmel region; Tabun Cave; Wady el-Mughara

Collected by Dorothy A.E. Garrod, 1932-1933