Iron Age textiles from Sasso di Furbara, Italy: Preliminary results of new scientific investigation

The paper presents preliminary results of a new analysis of textile assemblage from the Caolino necropolis at Sasso di Furbara (Cerveteri), Italy, which is one of the largest and most important Iron Age textile corpora known from Italy. The material was found in 1953 by construction workers in a wooden monoxile boat, interpreted as a cenotaph. The majority of the textiles are of exceptionally high quality both technically and aesthetically and illustrate a range in fineness and design. One of the textiles includes one of the oldest and most complex tablet weaves found in Italy. Another exceptional characteristic of many textile fragments from Sasso di Furbara is the fact that they preserve visible colour patterns, indicating the use of dyes. To date, 110 fragments survive, which were sandwiched between glass panels when the first conservation was carried out in the 1980s during the study of the material by Hubert Masurel, who published his findings in two articles differentiating the fragments into seven fabric groups, but no comprehensive catalogue of the material exists. In 2017, a new study of the Sasso di Furbara material was initiated involving conservation and full scientific investigation of the extant fragments, including structural analysis, radiocarbon dating, fibre identification, dye analysis and experimental reconstruction of the tablet weaves. The paper presents the new structural groups and results of dating and raw material analyses.