Afghanistan

Afghanistan is a country at the meeting point of Central and South Asia, home to Pashtun, Tajik, Hazara, Uzbek, Turkmen and other peoples. Their clothing and adornment reflect different local histories.

Some women wore small facial tattoos, including a beauty spot between the eyebrows. Older accounts also describe men returning from military service abroad with names or other designs tattooed on their skin. These were different routes into permanent decoration, rather than one shared Afghan custom.

Embroidery, jewellery and head coverings added colour and detail. Wedding garments could bring several skills together, from working cloth to arranging metal ornaments. What someone wore could change with their community and the occasion.

The country's much older gold discoveries reveal another chapter of adornment. The ornaments found at Tillya Tepe belong to an ancient world of trade and artistic exchange, separate from the nineteenth-century rulers and regional costumes shown in many of these portraits.