A brief overview of the major cultural traditions of the Indus region is presented along with a discussion of the current state of research on the most ancient textiles used by ancient peoples of this region. >
Recent work at Harappa by the Harappa Archaeological Research Project shows that a new study of artifacts recovered from the 1999 and 2000 seasons at the site has revealed the presence of silk. >
This article is a great example of the investigative work that is required when archaeological evidence and its analysis face mysterious disappearances. Chitra Balasubramaniam has written about how she followed the case of a piece of cotton cloth that "came wrapped around a silver perfume jar and a… >
Mehrgarh is the gift that keeps on giving to archaeologists, this time as the location with the oldest known cotton in the Indian subcontinent. Pushing back the origin of major crops, like rice recently, or silk previously, suggests that while some agricultural practices may have spread east to the Indus valley, others, like rice and perhaps cotton and crops that could rotate with other crops may have spread westwards from the Indus region. >
Until Dr. Vermaak's paper (2008), no one had connected the known existence of a Meluhhan village in the Girsu/Lagash area with Guabba; the availability of more texts since the first connections were made by scholars like Asko Parpola allowed him to both locate it more precisely and tease out a number of other references that give us some sense of what these people did and were known for. >
"The reconstruction of Puabi fully adorned provides insights into the fabric that lay beneath the sumptuous ornaments. The queen’s spectacular accessories, though important, have diverted our attention away from the cloth that lay beneath the eye-catching ornaments, which deteriorated (or de-materialized) long ago and so has been mostly invisible to us in the present day." >
