gems, analytical, species, lapis lazuli, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Chagai Hills

This paper is an updated version of a preliminary sulfur isotope study of lapis lazuli sources and artifacts that first appeared in my monograph Inter-regional Interaction and Urbanism in the Ancient Indus Valley (Law 2011: appendix 4.4). Determining the geologic provenance of this vivid blue ornamental rock, which was utilized sparingly but widely by peoples in pre- and proto-historic South Asia, has long been an important part of my research into the stone and metal acquisition networks of the Indus, or Harappan Civilization (ca. 2600–1900 BC). In the 1960s, Georgina Herrmann conducted a seminal study (Herrmann 1968) in which she evaluated all of the reported sources of lapis lazuli in the Old World and concluded that deposits in northern Afghanistan’s Badakhshan Province were almost certainly the only ones exploited in ancient times. Some time after that, in the 1980s, rumors surfaced of another potential source in the Chagai Hills area of western Balochistan Province, Pakistan. It was unclear, however, to what degree that newly reported source may have been exploited or if, in fact, it actually even existed. Since our first meeting in 2005, Prof. Maurizio Tosi has generously supplied me with crucial information and samples that has now permitted these questions to be addressed. Fig. 1 is a map with insets that shows the regions, lapis lazuli sources (both genuine and questionable), and sites that are discussed in this paper.