Silk-ma Mixed Woven Textiles in East Asian History

Abstract

Mixed woven textile (交織物) is a textile woven with yarns of two or more different fibres, in which each yarn contains only one type of fibre. Silk and ma (麻, a Chinese character used to name mainly bast and leaf fibres) are two kinds of the earliest fibre materials used in East Asia. They were opposite in properties, usage and social status in ancient East Asian society where cultures shared the same origin and social hierarchy was extremely rigid under the influence of Confucianism. However, they were woven into silk-ma mixed woven textiles as early as 2355±45 BP in China, as attested by the discovery of archaeological fabric fragments woven with silk and ramie-hemp threads. Archaeological artefacts and ancient documents of silk-ma mixed woven textiles are seldom discovered or recognized, most probably not because of their rare existence in history but because of the lack of precise identification. This paper will share historical evidence of silk-ma mixed woven textiles in the Chinese mainland, the Korean peninsula and the Japanese archipelago, summarize their features and reveal the possible reasons for their elusive presence.