Indus Valley Civilization: Clothing


Figure 1.--This Indus Valley seal may depict girls, but that is hard to assess with any certainty. We should have noted the source, but neglected to add where this seal is held.

Artifacts have been found, but relatively few providing clear images of the Indus Valley people and how they dressed. The images come from clay seals and terraotta figures. Argeologists have found large numbers of small figurines of women. This seal here may depict girls, but that is hard to assess with any certainty (figure 1). These statuettes differ from those found in other early sites in the level of detail given to hairstyles and jewelry. Women wore jewelry including gold and precious stone. They also had lipstick. A statue shows a women wearing a bracelet similsar in design to those worn in modern India. Clothing is somewhat more difficult to depict in detail. The impression is that men amd women dressed in robes or draped cloth. The terracotta stastuettev on the previous page is one of the best images. Notice that his robe is draped over only one shoulder. We do not know how common this is. As a stauettee is made of him, we would assume he is an indibidual of some social satus. The depictions of adult clothes are vasluable in that it is very unlikely that there were basically different styles and garments for children. As in other socities, the younger children probably often did not wear clothes. But when they did, they probably wore clothes similar in style to thsat of their parents. Ancient Indians are believed to have worn brightly colored clothes. Clothes were made from cotton. Cotton is native to India and is known to have been grown in India as early as 3,000 BC, but was almost ceratinly grown much earlier.







HBC







Navigate the Historic Boys' Clothing Web Site:
[Return to the Main Indus river valley civilizations page]
[Return to the Main river valley civilizations page]
[Return to the Main ancient India page]
[Return to the Main modern India page]
[Introduction] [Activities] [Art chronologies] [Biographies] [Countries] [Photography] [Style Index]
[Bibliographies] [Contributions] [FAQs] [Glossaries] [Images] [Links] [Registration] [Tools]
[Boys' Clothing Home]




Created: 4:58:03 AM 12/11/2009
Last updated: 7:14 PM 5/9/2014