IF THE figurines found in an ancient European settlement are any guide, women have been dressing to impress for at least 7,500 years.
Recent excavations at the site - part of the Vinca culture which was Europe's biggest prehistoric civilisation - point to a metropolis with a great degree of sophistication and a taste for art and fashion, archaeologists say.
In the Neolithic set
tlement, in what is now southern Serbia, men worked a furnace melting metal for tools. An ox pulled a load of ore, passing by an art workshop and a group of young women in short skirts.
"According to the figurines we found, young women were beautifully dressed, like today's girls in short tops and mini skirts, and wore bracelets around their arms," said the archaeologist Julka Kuzmanovic-Cvetkovic.
The unnamed tribe, who lived between 5400 and 4700 BC in the 120-hectare site at what is now Plocnik, knew about trade, handcrafts, art and metallurgy.
"They pursued beauty and produced 60 different forms of wonderful pottery and figurines, not only to represent deities, but also out of pure enjoyment," said Ms Kuzmanovic-Cvetkovic.
Houses had stoves, there were special holes for rubbish and the dead were buried in a tidy necropolis.
The community was especially fond of children. Artefacts include toys such as animals and rattles made of clay, and small, clumsily crafted pots apparently created by children at playtime.
