The aim of research project is to provide new approaches and new documentation on the textile culture in the ancient and post antique Mediterranean by investigating textile materials and evidences of different ages and provenances. Textile culture is one of the most peculiar expressions of Mediterranean history as a core of the modern Europe. The Archaeology and Archaeometry of Textiles is a project that goes far beyond the usual archaeological analysis into multidisciplinary research analysing technological-anthropological-economic factors of the textile production from antiquity through medieval and early modern age, till the pre-industrial period. For this purpose, Sapienza representatives of humanities and sciences join in and work together closely: archaeologists and experimental archaeologists, economic historians, scientists such as chemists, biologists, physicists, and textile researchers and conservators are involved in the different activities of the project. The project activities will take archaeological `case studies¿ into account from different areas of the ancient and post-antique Mediterranean. The wide chronological range of the selected cases is considered to be above all effective to detect continuities and changes: this comparative approach through ages and peoples can reveal that textile handicraft and technological traditions usually last for ages and are not being cut off by new political constellations. In this perspective, a unique key study is presented by the Pompeian textiles. The project is tackling the proposed themes in accordance with multidisciplinary approach: This joint effort is required not only by the heterogeneous nature of the archaeological evidences but also by the objectives of the research, which is investigating highly diversified phenomena such as (1) archaeological materials and the contexts, economic factors (2) diagnostic approaches to textile analyses (3) conservation practices concerning textile artefacts.
The innovative character of research and the decisive progress beyond the state of art are guaranteed both by (1)access to important archaeological data, and by (2)experimental analytical approaches, finally by (3)the elaboration of new protocols for conservation.
1. THE POTENTIAL OF THE NEW DATA
The access to highly important archaeological data is granted by the Cooperation-Agreement 'Textile Culture at Pompeii Project' started in 2014 between the Parco Archeologico di Pompei (OSANNA, MARTELLONE) and the CEZA Mannheim: the acquisition of the exceptional archaeological evidences of the textile activities at Pompeii was conducted by GALLI. That occasion saw the archaeometric analyses of textile fragments carried out by PhD fellow COLETTI. It was also possible to start experimental investigations of the textile tools. The information potential of Pompeian textile data has therefore been certified by preliminary results edited by GALLI 2017, GALLI in print.
A further factor to increase the information potential of the Project is the ability to compare data from the Pompeian materials with other selected items from the Greek Museums (SPANTIDAKI) and the Egyptian Museum of Florence (BUZI). They will constitute other case studies offering a solid basis for a detailed reconstruction of textile manufacturing in ancient and post-antique Mediterranean. The project's feasibility is guaranteed by the above quoted Cooperation Agreement and by the positive reactions to this Research proposal from the external institutions contacted in this preliminary phase.
2. SPERIMENTAL ARCHAEOMETRIC ANALYSES
The cooperation between the Sapienza Humanities Department (Archaeology, Fashion History) and Science Departments (Chemistry, Biology, Physics) will create and improve experimental analytical approaches alongside traditionally established methods in the textile research.
A.EXTRACTION PROTOCOL FOR DYES. The textile specimens are representative of critical conservation conditions, because they are mainly charred and only micro-areas of samples are available for the dyes and fiber analysis. For this reason, for the dyes analysis, the new extraction protocol developed by the Sapienza Chemistry Research Team will be applied for the characterization of archaeological samples: the ammonia method, developed for the best characterization of anthraquinone dyes from madder and cochineal, will be extended to several typologies of textile matrices. This will provide the applicability of this method to several and different classes of samples. Additionnaly, the design of new extraction methodologies and the comparison of all these will be useful to identify the most versatile ones for samples with different provenances and conservation paths: this approach
allows identifying analytical protocols that can be applied to different classes of samples.
B. BIOLOGICAL CHARACTERIZATION AND DNA of FIBERS. The biological characterization of textile fibres can result useful to understand changes and continuity in the historical textile manufactories: the molecular analysis could be related to variation of fiber properties during time, different provenance of animal and plant materials and, consequently, to development of trades, farming and crops during history. A possible way to study ancient plant fibers is to establish their molecular identity at various levels, including the genetic identity, using Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction(PCR) method: this allows analyzing their content of material in nucleic acids, although most likely the generic material is almost certainly partial and largely damaged. Additionally, FTIR-ATR analyses on ancient fibers will be performed. The aim is improving experimental protocols to identify especially plant fibers, hard to recognize with morphological analyses.
3. CONSERVATION PRACTICE AND GREEN CHEMISTRY
A. NANOMATERIAL FOR CONSERVATION. Further innovative aspects that should be taken into account are the study and the development of new nanomaterials thoroughly designed for historical textiles. As observed for several substrates (parchment, paper, canvas), nanomaterials offer remarkable advantages in consolidating: the design of specific nanomaterials for fabric conservation could transfer all these advantages to textiles which experienced aggressive environmental conditions, preserving them and making possible their exposition.
B. The archaeological-archeometric investigations of historical textiles will also provide ground for the experimentation of new chemical-physical testing new conservation practice according to the new 'green chemistry' protocols, which guarantees the application of not-invasive methods and products. The yarn cleaning is a recurrent problem in the conservation of the textile artifacts. In particular, the difficulty of removing corrosion and degradation products on plant and animal yarns, while preserving their integrity, has led to the search for innovative cleaning methods.