The question of prehistoric silks in Europe

Abstract

Textiles and clothing are among the most visible aspects of human social and symbolic behaviour and yet they have left all too few traces in the archaeological record and it is easy to overlook their importance. Luxury textiles such as silk can additionally provide evidence of long-distance contact, notably between Europe and China during the Han dynasty and the Roman empire. But can these connections be projected back in time to the prehistoric period? The late Irene Good proposed a number of identifications of silk in Iron Age Europe and was instrumental in bringing the issue to wider attention. Closer examination reported here, however, calls those identifications into question. Instead, the case is put that none of the claimed Iron Age silks can be confirmed, and that early traffic in silk textiles to Europe before the Roman period cannot be substantiated.

Textile Production in Iron Age Thrace

“…The qualitative test showed that the dye was di-bromium indigo (ancient purple dye)' (Nikolova, 2007: 187). no securely identified silk in Europe before the Roman period (Jørgensen, 2013), although silk is attested in Scythia from the first century AD (Gleba & Krupa, 2012: 407-16). In the light of these studies, the identification from Zlatinitsa needs to be confirmed by scanning electron microscope (SEM) analysis of the fibre structure.…”

Species identification of silks by protein mass spectrometry reveals evidence of wild silk use in antiquity

“…Well-established test standards for fibre identification by microscopic methods place the greatest importance on the cross-sectional shape of the natural fibres 7 , 8 , but it is difficult to capture subtle morphological differences between silk species, particularly in deteriorated samples that are commonly found among historical and archaeological textiles. The misidentification of silks from prehistory and antiquity using these methods can be found in several standard texts on the European Iron Age in the context of interpretating trade links 9 . To partially address the challenge of sample deterioration, proteomic approaches have been recently applied, including amino acid analysis 10 , 11 , liquid-chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC–MS/MS) 12 – 14 , and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) 13 , 15 .…”

Berit Hildebrandt with Carole Gillis, eds. Silk: Trade and Exchange along the Silk Roads between Rome and China in Antiquity (Ancient Textiles Series 19. Oxford & Philadephia: Oxbow Books, 2017, 130 pp, 85 colour and 24 b/w illustr., hbk, ISBN978-1-78570-289-2)

“…The suggestion that silk production began in India almost at the same time as in China, and the identification of different species of silk moth, are further important issues, but need to be scrutinized. Fibre identification using Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and amino acid analysis are methods that are still new, standards of documentation are in the process of being established (Rast-Eicher, 2016), and in some cases results have been contradictorily interpreted (Bender Jørgensen, 2013). More work on this is needed.…”