The core area of the Indus Civilisation contained very few raw materials, which had to be brought in from surrounding areas. This included tin and lapis lazuli from Central Asia, sea-shells from the Indian Ocean and copper, which may have come from as far away as Oman. The distances that some of these objects travelled is striking (shell is found at sites over 1300km away from the coast), especially considering that the Indus Civilisation predated the domestication of horses. There is little evidence that the wealth generated by such trade was monopolised by centralised institutions (such as temples) or elite groups.

Standardised systems of measurement, such as the Indus weights, facilitated activities across wide areas, such as tax collection and trade, and were very important to the development of administrative systems in early complex societies.

The most common Indus weights are approximately 13.7g. Below this the weights descend in a binary system: the smallest unit weighs 0.856g – one 16th of 13.7g. Above this weight, units increase decimally. The largest is 1.37kg – 100 times the basic unit. In addition to the weights, a number of copper scale-pans and scale-beams have also been found at Indus sites.