![]() ![]() True purple was produced primarily from three species of sea mollusks of the Muricidae family, which were common in the Mediterranean Sea: Hexaplex trunculus ( Murex trunculus), Bolinus brandaris ( Murex brandaris) and Stramonita haemastoma ( Thais haemastoma) ( Fig 1). Their context-in a marginal region inhabited by semi-nomadic tribes, and within debris of copper smelting activities-sheds new light on the society that operated the mines at the turn of the 1 st millennium BCE, with implications for our understanding of trade and economy in the broader Southern Levantine region during this period. The finds from Timna currently constitute the earliest physical evidence on dyed fiber of true purple in the Southern Levant. True purple-also known as ‘royal purple’-was considered the most prestigious dye for textiles in many ancient societies. Focusing on the dyeing technologies, we applied High Pressure Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) analyses to identify organic dyestuff we found three items that were dyed with true purple, which is based on extracts from the murex sea snail. This rare assemblage from Timna provides a window into aspects of past societies that are usually hardly visible in the archaeological research. Starting in 2013, excavations in several copper production sites in the region by the Central Timna Valley Project uncovered dozens of fragments of dyed textiles, which currently constitute the largest Iron Age assemblage in the Southern Levant. Such conditions exist in the ancient copper-ore district of the Timna Valley (southern Israel). Like any perishable organic material, they are usually subject to rapid decomposition and their preservation requires special conditions to prevent destruction by microorganisms. However, textiles are rare in the archaeological record. The color of textiles provides a window into various aspects of ancient societies, including the role of textile dyeing and technological achievements, fashion, social stratification, agriculture and trade connections. Textile dyeing has been practiced since prehistoric times, using dyes that are extracted from both plant and animal sources. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Ĭompeting interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests existĮarly iron age textiles from Timna Valley ![]() This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.ĭata Availability: All relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting Information files.įunding: The research was supported by funding by the Israel Science Foundation (Grant 1143/19 1880/17). Received: SeptemAccepted: JanuPublished: January 28, 2021Ĭopyright: © 2021 Sukenik et al. PLoS ONE 16(1):Įditor: Andrea Zerboni, Universita degli Studi di Milano, ITALY In conjunction with other observations of the very high quality of the Timna textiles, this provides an exceptional opportunity to address questions related to social stratification and organization of the nomadic society operating the mines (early Edom), the “fashion” of elite in the region during the early Iron Age, trade connections, technological capabilities, and more.Ĭitation: Sukenik N, Iluz D, Amar Z, Varvak A, Shamir O, Ben-Yosef E (2021) Early evidence of royal purple dyed textile from Timna Valley (Israel). While evidence for the important role of purple dyes in the ancient Mediterranean goes back to the Middle Bronze Age (early 2 nd millennium BCE), finds of dyed textiles are extremely rare, and those from Timna are the oldest currently known in the Southern Levant. ![]() The samples originated from excavations at the extensive Iron Age copper smelting site of “Slaves’ Hill” (Site 34), which is tightly dated by radiocarbon to the late 11 th–early 10 th centuries BCE. Furthermore, by comparing the analytical results with those obtained in a series of controlled dyeing experiments we were able to shed more light on the specific species used in the dyeing process and glean insights into the ancient dyeing technology. Our identification is based on the presence of 6-monobromoindigotin and 6, 6-dibromoindigotin components (detected using HPLC analysis), which is considered unequivocal evidence for the use of murex-derived purple dyestuff. In the context of a broad study aimed at examining dyeing technologies in the Timna textiles collection, three samples of prestigious fibers dyed with murex sea snail were identified.
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