Abstract:

Yingpan is the key location on the Silk Road in Xinjiang, and the archaeologists discovered a large number of textiles in several burial sites dating from Han-Jin period. Studies on archaeological silk fibers including species identification and proteins degradation are carried on with optical microscope, FTIR, XRD and thermal analysis techniques. It is shown that the silk fibers from Yingpan are mostly bombyx mori silk and bombyx mandarina. Furthermore, the results suggest that the polymerization and thermal decomposition temperature of archaeological silk decreased since the textile suffered from long-range biodegradation and hydrolysis.