[Reader-list] The evidence of use of Silk Indus Valley ...

[Pawan Durani]

http://sites.google.com/site/kalyan97/silk
New evidence for early silk in the Indus civilization â€" IL Good, JM
Kenoyer, RH Meadow
(2009) http://www.scribd.com/doc/11508384/Indussilk

The pieces of evidence for  silk in Harappa and Chanhudaro are from threads
to connect
beads or bangle  fragments.

http://sites.google.com/site/kalyan97/silk/ScreenShot270.bmp?attredirects=0Fig.
3
Copper or copper-alloy wire ornament from Harappa c. 2200 BCE revealing
intact thread.
Photograph by JM Kenoyer.

http://sites.google.com/site/kalyan97/silk/ScreenShot271.bmp?attredirects=0
Fig. 6
Steatite (enstatite) microbead from Chanhu-daro showing slightly 'S' twisted
single-ply
thread. Photomicrograph by I. Good and R. Newman

[Note BC has been changed to BCE; AD has been changed to CE] Silk is an
important
economic fibre, and is generally considered to have been the exclusive
cultural heritage of
China. Silk weaving is evident from the Shang period c.1600â€"1045BCE though
the
earliest evidence for silk textiles in ancient China may date to as much as
a millennium
earlier. Recent microscopic analysis of archaeological thread fragments
found inside
copper-alloy ornaments from Harappa and steatite beads from Chanhu-daro,
twoimportant Indus sites, have yielded silk fibres, dating
toc.2450â€"2000BCE. This study
offers the earliest evidence in the world for any silk outside China, and is
roughlycontemporaneous with the earliest Chinese evidence for silk. This
important new
finding brings into question the traditional historical notion of
sericulture as being an
exclusivelyChinese invention.

BACKGROUND

The Indus Civilization, c. 2800â€"1900 bce, was one of the great urban
riverine
civilizations of the ancient world. Current understanding of this cultural
phenomenon is
that it emerged out of earlier diverse, regional cultures that interacted
with each other
economically and socially. Settlements of the Indus Civilization spread over
a vast area,
centred on the Indus and Ghaggar-Hakra river systems of Pakistan and
northern India.
>From the Himalaya and Hindu Kush to the coastal regions of Kutch and
Gujarat, westward
into Baluchistan and eastward into northwestern India, sites identified with
the Indus
Civilization are distributed across an area larger than that of Mesopotamia
or of Egypt.
Harappa, a settlement near the river Ravi in what is now Punjab Province of
Pakistan, was
the first of the Indus cities to be discovered (Vats 1940). For more than a
century
excavations have been carried out in the eponymous city (for a recent
overview, see
Possehl 2002; see also Kenoyer 1998). The florescence of the Indus culture
(2600â€"1900
bce) is sometimes

designatedMature Harappa . More than a few enigmas concerning the Indus
Civilization
still vex archaeologists, not least of which is the lack of substantive
evidence for reciprocal
exchange of commodities with Mesopotamia, where Indus-produced luxury
materials such
as etched and long biconical carnelian beads were found in the Early
Dynastic III period
royal graves at Ur (Zettler and Horne 1998).

Recent work at Harappa (e.g., Meadow and Kenoyer 2005, 2008) has been
carried out by
the Harappa Archaeological Research Project (HARP), directed by Richard H.
Meadow
(Harvard University), Jonathan Mark Kenoyer (University of Wisconsin at
Madison), and Rita
P. Wright (New York University) in collaboration with the Department of
Archaeology and
Museums of the Government of Pakistan. A new study of artefacts recovered
from the
1999 and 2000 seasons at the site has revealed the presence of silk. The
silk is not
degummed but contains sericin-coated twinned brins, or filaments, of
fibroin.

Micromorphological study indicates that the silk derived from wild silkmoth
species rather
than Bombyx mori . To assess the culture-historical significance of these
new silk finds we
take into account several wild

silkmoth species known to South Asia, understanding that the real nature and
extent of
sericulture in antiquity is at present unknown. It has been assumed that the
wild ancestor
to the Chinese silkmoth,

Bombyx mandarina (Moore) was domesticated into the well-known (and only
domesticated) insect

B. mori in China (Kuhn 1982; Chang 1986), although B. mandarina (Moore) is
also native to
South Asia. The earliest evidence to date for silk in China comes from an
isolated find
possibly as early as c. 2570

Bce from the Liangzhou Neolithic site of Qianshanyang (Zhou 1980; see also
Vainker
2004; Good, forthcoming). There is evidence for silk from a bead thread at
Nevasa in
peninsular India c. 1500 bce

(Gulati 1961; see also Good 1995; Janaway and Coningham 1995). This new
evidence of
silk from both the recent excavations at the site of Harappa and from the
Chanhu-daro
collection curated at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, indicates that silk
threads were
being produced nearly a millennium earlier than the Nevasa finds, and were
being used in
more than one Indus settlement during the height of Indus urbanism. This new
discovery
of silk in the Indus Valley pushes back the earliest date of silk outside of
China by a
millennium and is roughly contemporaneous with the earliest evidence for
silk from within
China.

Not only has early evidence for silk been assumed to be limited to China,
but the
techniques of degumming and reeling have also been considered exclusive
Chinese silk
industry 'secrets'. The process of degumming is one in which the sericin gum
is removed
from the silk, by submerging the cocoons into a weak alkaline solution.
Reeling silk is a
process by which the long silk strands (gummed or not) are collected on to a
bobbin
rather than needing to be twisted as short segments into a spun thread.
These two
important silkworking processes have been thought to be part of a 'package'
of Chinese
technology known only to China until well into the early centuries ce,
although the
evidence presented here indicates that wild

Antheraea silks were also known and used in the Indus area as early as the
mid-third
millennium

bce, and that reeling was practised. The implication of evidence for silk
reeling is that the
silkmoth was stifled, leaving the cocoon intact in order to be unravelled.
When wild silk
cocoons are collected on the ground, usually after the silkmoth has eaten
its way out, the
remaining silk fibres must be spun rather than reeled, as they are short.
Specific
contributions of the present paper include discussion of new silk finds from
Harappa and
Chanhu-daro along with SEM imaging of modern wild specimens of Antheraea
assamensis
and A. mylitta silk…

RESULTS

Harappa

In the course of excavations on Mound E at Harappa in 1999, a hollow copper
or copper-
alloy bangle fragment (H1999/8863-2) was recovered from domestic debris that
dates to
Period 3C (c. 2200â€"1900 cal

bce). Preserved fibre forming a thread was found inside the hollow portion
of the bangle.
The thread samples removed comprise two fragments: one was recovered in
disintegrated
condition (designated 'A') and the other still retained some thread
structure ('B'). These
two samples are of the same thread, and are composed uniformly of the same
type of
fibre. Partial mineralization and fibre disintegration hampered a simple and
straightforward identification of thread sample H99/8863-2. The thread
itself is a slightly
'S' twisted (at about10°), two-plied thread with approximately 60â€"75
'Z'-spun strands
in each ply.

Scanning electron micrographic survey at high resolution (1000 magnification
and above)
of various sites on both sample fragments 'A' and 'B' allowed morphological
determination
of fibres to be silk, and further determination of silk from the A.
assamensis species (see
Table 1 and Figs 1 and 2).

A second thread sample from Harappa (H2000/2242-1 lab 2000â€"1955) was
recovered
in the 2000 field season. It was found preserved inside a coiled wire
ornament made of
native copper or of a copper-alloy that was recovered from debris on the
floor of a
structure dating to late Period 3A or early Period 3B (c. 2450 cal bce). The
ornament
appears to be some sort of necklace made up of two strands of coiled wire
strung with silk
thread. This sample is also of a wild Antheraea silk, but appears to be from
a different
species, A. mylitta , as it has a distinctive striated fibre (Figs 3â€"5).
The particular
morphological characteristics of each type of silk are due to the unique
shape of the
silkworm's orifice when ejecting fibroin during cocooning. In this case,
striations are
characteristic of A. mylitta silk. These two species are indigenous to South
Asia. A.
assamensis is found in the high altitudes of the northeastern subcontinent,

And A. mylitta is found along the tropical west coastal region. However,
both regions are
at a considerable distance from the Indus Valley…

Chanhu-daro

Chanhu-daro is another significant site of the Indus Civilization, located
on the west bank
of the river Indus in what is now Sindh province of Pakistan. Chanhu-daro
was excavated
in the winter of 1935â€"36 by the first American Archaeological Expedition
to India
directed by Ernest Mackay and sponsored by of the American Oriental Society
and the
Boston Museum of Fine Arts (Mackay 1943). A recent survey of excavated small
finds
(principally copper or copperalloy artefacts such as razors and bowls)
currently in the
Boston MFA collections revealed several objects with either textile
'pseudomorph' or actual
extant textile adhering to surfaces of objects. One object, a heat-fused
cluster of
microbeads made of enstatite (heated magnesium silicate, perhaps in the form
of steatite)
found inside a copper or copper-alloy bowl, had been

published in Mackay's report (plate LXXIV, object 2391). The microbeads
contained therein
(object 2391B) were noted to include intact thread remains (see Figs 6 and
7). The object
dates somewhere between 2450 and 2000 bce . Microbead and thread samples
from this
object from Chanhu-daro were removed and analysed. The thread consists of a
single ply
of approximately 40â€"50 strands, with a slight 'S'

twist (approximately 12â€"15°). Fibres from the thread were studied under
SEM at 20
kVwithout sputtercoating. They appear partially gummed and partially
twinned,
characteristic of a reeled (but not degummed) silk. It is not certain at
this stage of research
from which species of silkmoth these fibres derived. The fibres may be from
A. assamensis
or possibly from a species of Philosamia (Eri silk)…

DISCUSSION

The formal exportation of silk from China took place around 119â€"115 bce
during the
reign of Han Emperor Wu-ti, who sought the fabulous blood-sweating
'celestial horses' of
Ferghana (in modern day Uzbekistan). Yet archaeologists have puzzled over
the early
presence of silk in a late prehistoric Celtic site in Germany

C . 700 bce , as well as silk finds from several other sites in Europe, the
Mediterranean,
Egypt and Central Asia (see, for example, Richter 1929; Hundt 1971; Askarov
1973; Wild
1984; Braun 1987; Lubec et al.

1993). For decades, archaeologists have cited these findings as evidence for
early contact
between China and the West (for full discussion see Good 1995; see also Good
in press).
What has not been adequately considered in the literature, however, is the
possibility that
a non-Chinese (and de facto wild) species of silkworm that produced workable
silk was
known and used in antiquity, and that the rare instances of silk that have
been discovered
far outside of China, and that date to before Wu-ti's trade relationship
with the West
began, may have, in fact, been produced indigenously or imported from
regions other
than China. The evidence presented here now suggests that early sericulture
did in fact
exist in South Asia and was roughly contemporaneous with the earliest known
silk use in
China.

CONCLUSIONS

This research offers new insight on the extent and antiquity of sericulture.
Specifically,
these finds indicate the use of wild indigenous silkmoth species in South
Asia as early as
the mid-third millennium bce. Careful morphological study of highly degraded
fibres
through images derived from scanning electron microscopy allows subtle but
distinct and
diagnostic features of fibre surface and fibre shaft morphology to aid in
moth species
identification. At least two separate types of silk were utilized in the
Indus in the mid-
third  millennium bce.

Based on SEM image analysis there are two thread forms in the samples from
Harappa,
which appear to be from two different species of silkmoth (Antheraeasp.).
The silk from
Chanhudaro may be from yet another South Asian moth species Philosamia spp.
(Eri silk).
Moreover, this silk appears to have been reeled. The variety in type,
technology and thread
forms of these few rare examples of silk offers us a glimpse into the extent
of knowledge
about sericulture in the Indus Civilization during the Mature Harappan
phase. This
knowledge helps to explain other early instances of silk in Eurasia outside
of China,
specifically from the mid-second millennium bc Deccan Peninsula of India
(Gulati 1961)
and contemporaneously in Bactria (Askarov 1973). By careful analysis of
archaeological
silk fibre surface morphology, one can distinguish between the source
silkworm species.
Through this type of study we can also begin to better understand the
origins of silk use
further to the East. The discoveries described here demonstrate that silk
was being used
over a wide region of South Asia for more than 2000 years before the
introduction of
domesticated silk from China. Earlier models that attribute the origins of
silk and
sericulture exclusively to China need to be re-examined and revised.

NOTE

Ages employed in this article for Harappa and Indus Civilization sites are
based on
calibrated radiocarbon dates, of which more than 100 come from Harappa.
Other dates are
those current in the literature…

Meadow and Kenoyer excavated the Harappa materials and identified samples
with
threads. Kenoyer conducted preliminary analyses on Harappa threads (the
results of which
are referred to in Kenoyer 2003, 2004). Meadow and Kenoyer provided Harappa
samples
to Good, who analysed and identified the threads both from Harappa and from
Chanhu-
daro. Good wrote the article, with contributions on Indus archaeology from
Kenoyer and
Meadow, and produced the images and figures, except Figures 3 and 4.

[Source: Good, I.L., JM Kenoyer and RH Meadow, 2009, New evidence for early
silk in the
Indus civilization, Archaeometry, 50,00 (2009), Univ. of Oxford]

Some glosses related to silk: See at
http://sites.google.com/site/kalyan97/silk