Timeline of Art Art in South Asia The Earliest Evidence of Cotton Cultivation

The Earliest Evidence of Cotton Cultivation

5500 BCE

Cotton textiles, while possibly produced from an earlier period, appear in the South Asian archaeological record for the first time. A bracelet of copper beads, dated to this time frame, is found during a 1970s excavation of the burial chamber of an adult and infant at Mehrgarh (in present-day Balochistan, Pakistan), and contains a length of cotton twine. The ornament, made with considerable difficulty at the time, is a sign of the deceased’s wealth and status.

Bibliography

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

Riello, Giorgio. Cotton: The Fabric that Made the Modern World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Shaffer, Lynda. “Southernization.” Journal of World History 5, no. 1 (1994): 1–21.

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Art in South Asia

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