Purpose: The purpose of the present work is to introduce into scientific circulation the results of technical and technological analysis of tissue samples found during excavation of Novotroitskoye-1 burial ground and to discuss some issues related to their interpretation. The paper deals with the fragments of pants, and hems of the items from a tomb of one of the Mound 15 of the necropolis of Novotroitskoye-1, discovered during the excavations by A.P. Umansky, in Talmensky district of the Altai territory. Currently, these findings are stored in the Historical Museum of the Altai State Pedagogical University (funds numbers: 39, 40, 44).

Results: the study found out that the raw material basis of the fabric is wool. The threads are twisted. Their colours are various shades of brown. The threads of the supposed «basics» and «duck» are indistinguishable, their thickness in the samples is almost the same. Total slack strands in the leaf tissue must be an evidence of that they were made on a simple fixture without fixing, perhaps, on a vertical loom, although due to the lack of edges we won't discuss it in oreder to be on safe side. The studied object is small in size, has no obvious errors in weaving, but is excessively damaged by negligent storage. The first fragment of the study, most likely, refers to men's pants. The second and third fragments probably relate to the hem of a female waist (skirt) or shoulder (dress) clothing. The main difference between the considered fragments is that the cloth of men's clothing is linen, and the one of women's is twill. This is probably due to the gender differentiation of clothing among the population of the Upper Ob River Basin in the Early Iron Age.

Conclusions: The analysis of findings provided a new perspective on design methods for making hem shoulder or waist clothing, traditional casual clothing of the population of the Upper Ob River Basin in the Early Iron Age. The data obtained in the course of the study make it possible to consider in more detail the issues related to the study of archaeological textiles within the complex subject of clothing of the ancient population of North Asia.

Key words: Upper Ob region, Early Iron Age, archaeological fabrics, technical and technological analysis, textiles.

DOI: 10.20874/2071-0437-2018-41-2-061-068

18.06.2018

N.N. Golovchenko

Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of Siberian Branch RAS

Lavrent’ev Ave., 17, Novosibirsk, 630090, Russian Federation

Altai State Pedagogical University

Molodezhnaya st., 55, Barnaul, 656031, Russian Federation

E-mail: nikolai.golowchenko@yandex.ru