Silk and dyes from China and India are among ancient textiles that have been recovered from dig sites in the Nepalese Himalayas. A recent analysis dated the materials between 400 and 650 A.D., suggesting that the famed Silk Road may have extended farther south than previously thought.
Led by Margarita Gleba of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge, the recent discovery also shows that the nearby village of Samdzong was incorporated into the ancient network of trade routes much earlier.
The Samdzong tomb complex is found in Nepal's Upper Mustang region, near the border dividing Nepal and China. The cloth remains were found in Samdzong 5, near a gold/silver funerary mask.
"There is no evidence for local silk production suggesting that Samdzong was inserted into the long-distance trade network of the Silk Road," Gleba explained. "The data reinforce the notion that instead of being isolated and remote, Upper Mustang was once a small, but important node of a much larger network of people and places. These textiles can further our understanding of the local textile materials and techniques, as well as the mechanisms through which various communities developed and adapted new textile technologies to fit local cultural and economical needs."
Since there is no evidence of local silk production in the region, researchers report that the degummed silk fibers, munjeet and Indian lac dyes used in the textiles suggest that imported materials from China and India were used in combination with those produced locally.
Previous archaeological digs have yielded a few contemporary textile artifacts in Nepal, but the tomb complex features an ideal environment for preservation, with a dry climate and high altitude of 4,000 meters.
The dyed silk is one of several textile artifacts recovered from the tomb complex, where there are five tomb shafts.
In addition to the use of lac dyes - identified by Ina Vanden Berghe at the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage - some of the textiles are woven from wool fabrics and feature copper, glass and cloth beads.
These textiles were found near a coffin of an adult along with a spectacular gold/silver funerary mask, which has small pinholes around its edges. This, the researchers say, suggests that it had been sewn to a fabric and likely used as decorative headwear.
Excavations of the Samdzong tomb complex did not begin until 2009, when a small earthquake sheared a mountainside cliff face, exposing the tombs carved from the soft conglomerate rock. This opened new doors to exploring the history of the Silk Road.
Their study was published in the March 30 issue of the journal Science and Technology of Archaeological Research.
