Prehistoric South Asian Clothing

Cotton and the Indus Valley Civilization

South Asia's greatest contribution to the global history of clothing is cotton. Cotton (Gossypium arboreum) was cultivated and woven by the Indus Valley civilization, and fragments of cotton cloth discovered at the site of Mohenjo-daro date to the third millennium BCE.^7,1 Older still, evidence from the earlier site of Mehrgarh in Balochistan suggests that cotton fibers were being used as early as the sixth millennium BCE — the earliest known cotton in the Old World.^1,3 Cotton was also domesticated independently in the Americas, whose upland species dominates world production today, but South Asia was one of the fiber's original homes.⁶

The Indus Valley cities of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa reveal a civilization deeply engaged in textile production.³ Numerous spindle whorls and fragments of woven cotton cloth have been recovered from these sites, and the many whorls found in the houses of Mohenjo-daro show that spinning was common there, practised by rich and poor alike.^3,7 Stone sculptures from Mohenjo-daro show men in draped garments — a long shawl drawn over the left shoulder — while terracotta figurines depict women wearing little more than a girdle or band about the loins beneath elaborate fan-shaped headdresses, indicating that clothing served decorative and possibly ritual functions alongside practical ones.^7,8

Ornaments were worn freely by men and women of all classes, and the bronze "Dancing Girl" from Mohenjo-daro wears nothing but her ornaments, her left arm encased in bangles from shoulder to wrist.⁷

The excavators linked that fashion to the large numbers of bangles, made of shell, copper, faience and terracotta, found at both Mohenjo-daro and Harappa.⁷

Early Weaving and Dye Traditions

Cotton was not South Asia's only early fiber: flax threads survive in beads of about 1000 BCE from Chandoli in the Deccan, and silk has been reported from third-millennium contexts at Harappa and from mid-second-millennium levels at Nevasa.³ Sites in the Deccan Plateau and the Ganges Plain, many of them contemporary with or later than the Indus cities, are reported to have yielded evidence of early weaving in the form of textile impressions on pottery and collections of spindle whorls.³ Plant remains trace the spread of cotton and flax cultivation from Baluchistan in the Neolithic, through the Indus Valley in the third millennium BCE, and across North and Central India from the mid-second millennium BCE, supplying the raw material for spinning and weaving wherever the crops took hold.³

The Indus Valley people also appear to have been early practitioners of textile dyeing.⁷ Traces of madder (a red dye derived from the Rubia plant) were reported on cotton fragments from Mohenjo-daro, an early example of dyed cotton cloth — though that identification, made with the analytical techniques of the excavation era, may not be reliable, and dyed fibers older still are known elsewhere, including dyed cotton microfibers from Tel Tsaf in the Jordan Valley dating to about 5200–4700 BCE.^4,5,7,1,2 Harappan settlers kept consistent standards of weights, a mark of systematic trade,⁹ and textiles may have been produced not only for local use but also for trade — a hypothesis consistent with cotton fibers of probable South Asian origin turning up far to the west, at Tel Tsaf in the Levant.¹ South Asia's prehistoric textile traditions thus laid the groundwork for the subcontinent's long history as a center of cotton production and trade. For the cotton trade with Rome that came later, see ancient South Asian clothing.

Sources

1. The earliest cotton fibers and Pan-regional contacts in the Near East — Li Liu, Maureece J. Levin, Florian Klimscha and Danny Rosenberg, Frontiers in Plant Science, 2022.
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2. Dyed Cotton Fibers Found at Neolithic Village Site in Israel — Archaeology Magazine (Archaeological Institute of America).Reference 1
3. An Immaterial Problem: Toward an Archaeology of Textiles and Textile Production in Historic South Asia — Jason Hawkes, Asian Perspectives 60(2), University of Hawai'i Press, 2021 (on the Mehrgarh cotton thread, spindle whorls from Harappa, Mohenjo-daro, Inamgaon and Chirand, and textile impressions on pottery).
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4. The Matter of Madder in the Ancient World — Richard Newman and Glenn Alan Gates, in Mummy Portraits of Roman Egypt, J. Paul Getty Museum, 2020 (on the reported Mohenjo-daro madder and the reliability of that analysis).Reference 1
5. Rubia tinctorum (madder) — Cambridge University Botanic Garden, Dyes Trail.Reference 1
6. Gossypium hirsutum (PROTA) — E. C. Ikitoo, PROTA4U / Pl@ntUse, 2011 (on the American origin of upland cotton and its share of world production).Reference 1
7. Mohenjo-daro and the Indus Civilization, Vol. I — ed. Sir John Marshall, Arthur Probsthain, 1931, via Internet Archive (male statues in a long shawl "drawn over the left shoulder and under the right"; female figurines "nude except for a narrow girdle around the loins" with fan-like headdresses).
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8. Traces of the Past: The Terracotta Repertoire From the Harappan Civilisation — Deeksha Bhardwaj, Sahapedia (female figurines with loincloth, girdle and fan-shaped headdress).Reference 1
9. Weight(s) and Measurements — National Museum, New Delhi, Curators' Corner (the balance and weights from Mohenjo-daro; Harappan settlers "maintained consistent standards of weights").Reference 1