Trends, traditions, and transformations: Fashions in dress in Early Dynastic Mesopotamia

This research reconstructs fashions and fashion trends in Early Dynastic Mesopotamia (ca. 2900-2350 B.C.E.) to illuminate crucial social developments in an early complex society. This reconstruction reveals that multiple and competing fashions existed in Early Dynastic society for the purpose of creating social distinctions related to gender, status, occupation, and locality. These fashions were created and sustained through the patterned display of dress that came to have conventional associations with different social personae such as male and female rulers, musicians, and soldiers of various ranks. Wearing the fashions connected to these personae was the means of embodying them, of showcasing an achievement of the power to act out social roles and display social affinities. Reconstructions of Early Dynastic fashion trends show increasing elaboration, standardization, and regionalization through time connected to the development and legitimization of increasingly diversified and complex social institutions. The appearance of elaborated high or royal fashions in the late Early Dynastic period was part of the emergence of newly formalized and authoritative leaders able to demonstrate rulership over one or multiple Early Dynastic cities. Evidence for standardized dress or outfits shows the development of more rigid social roles and the creation of the social impositions necessary to display and maintain them. Greater regionalization in dress was an impetus and outgrowth of increasing social, economic, and political integration among Early Dynastic cities. Reconstructions of fashions and fashions trends in dress are insightful on multiple fronts, enlightening the emergence of social personae and illuminating their participation in the distinct social institutions and relationships that formed the basis of Early Dynastic society