Timeline of Art Art in South Asia The Earliest Evidence of Textile Dyes Is Found

The Earliest Evidence of Textile Dyes Is Found

3500 BCE

Fragments of cloth dyed and patterned with madder red appear in the archaeological record, at Mohenjo-daro in present-day Sindh, Pakistan, then a rapidly-expanding Harappan settlement. Found during the 1921 excavation here, these fragments date to two millennia after the cotton threads found in an ornament in a 1970s excavation at Mehrgarh (in present-day Balochistan, Pakistan), suggesting the continued production of cotton fabrics in the region. 

Bibliography

Crill, Rosemary. The Fabric of India. New Delhi: Roli Books, 2015.

Mithen, Steven J. After the Ice: A Global Human History, 20,000-5,000 BC. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006.

Siva, R. “Status of Natural Dyes and Dye-Yielding Plants in India.” Current Science 92, no. 7 (2007): 916–25. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24097672. 

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Art in South Asia

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The Earliest Evidence of Cotton Cultivation The Earliest Evidence of Indian Block-Printed Textiles