ABSTRACT
The excellent craftsmanship of ancient Oriental and Central Asian textile dyers is already demonstrated in the remarkable brilliance and fastness of the colours of the so-called Pazyryk carpet, the by far oldest pile carpet found to date. This specimen resembles the advanced craftsmanship of Iron Age Central Asian textile production. We have employed synchrotron-based µ-XRF imaging to detect the distribution of metal organic pigments within individual fibres of the Pazyryk carpet (about 2500 years old) and compare the results to wool fibres, which we prepared according to traditional Anatolian dyeing recipes. We observe congruent pigment distribution within specimens from the Pazyryk carpet and natural wool fibres that we have fermented prior to dyeing. Therefore, we conclude that the superior fermentation technique has been utilized about 2000 years earlier than known so far.
ABSTRACT
Many handmade ancient and recent oriental wool carpets show outstanding brilliance and persistence of colour that is not achieved by common industrial dyeing procedures. Anthropologists have suggested the influence of wool fermentation prior to dyeing as key technique to achieve the high dyeing quality. By means of µ-XRF elemental mapping of mordant metals we corroborate this view and show a deep and homogenous penetration of colourants into fermented wool fibres. Furthermore we are able to apply this technique and prove that the fermentation process for ancient specimens cannot be investigated by standard methods due to the lack of intact cuticle layers. This finding suggests a broad range of further investigations that will contribute to a deeper understanding of the development of traditional dyeing techniques. Spectroscopic studies add information on the oxidation states of the metal ions within the respective mordant-dye-complexes and suggest a partial charge transfer as basis for a significant colour change when Fe mordants are used.
