The arid climate of many regions within Central Asia often leads to excellent archaeological preservation, especially in sealed funerary contexts, allowing for ancient DNA analyses. While geneticists have looked at human remains, clothes, tools, and other burial objects are often neglected. In this paper, we present the results of an ancient DNA study on Bronze Age leather objects excavated from tombs of the Wupu cemetery in the Hami Oasis and Yanghai cemetery in the Turpan Oasis, both in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of northwestern China. In addition to species identification of goat (Capra aegagrus/hircus), sheep (Ovis orientalis/aries), and cattle (Bos primigenius/taurus), mitochondrial haplogroups were determined for several samples. Our results show that Bronze Age domesticated goats and sheep from the Hami and Turpan oases possessed identical or closely related haplotypes to modern domestic animals of this area. The absence of leather produced from wild animals emphasizes the importance of animal husbandry in the cultures of Wupu and Yanghai.

The first millennium BCE was pivotal for the environment and for human societies in Central and Eastern Eurasia because transformations accelerated and altered natural and cultural landscapes to hitherto unknown dimensions. Among the major driving forces was the increasing use of horse riding, which extended range of movement significantly and led to the development of cavalry units as a part of large armies. Empires with enormous outreach and gravitational pull formed and disintegrated in close dependence. The wide spread of military technologies demonstrates their bonds, though mostly in the form of metal objects due to the inherent survivability of their materials. Equipment and protective clothing of organic material, albeit produced in large numbers and thus an economic and environmental factor, are rarely preserved. In Yanghai cemetery site, Turfan, the remains of one leather scale armour were discovered. In this study, the results of the AMS radiocarbon dating as well as the construction details of the Yanghai find are presented and compared with a contemporary armour of unknown origin in the Metropolitan Museum of Art New York (MET) and with finds and depictions from the Near East, the adjacent northern steppe areas and the territory of China. The armour, datable to 786-543 cal BCE (95% probability), was originally made of about 5444 smaller scales and 140 larger scales, which, together with leather laces and lining, had a total weight of ca. 4-5 kg. Our reconstruction demonstrates that it can be donned quickly and without the help of another person by wrapping the left part around the back, tying it to the right part under the right arm and fastening with thongs crosswise over the back to laces at the opposite hip parts. Fitting different statures, it is a light and highly efficient defensive garment. In age, construction details and aesthetic appearance it resembles the MET armour. The stylistic similarities but constructional differences suggest that the two armours were intended as outfits for distinct units of the same army, i.e. light cavalry and heavy infantry, respectively. As such a high level of standardization of military equipment during the 7th century BCE is only known for the Neo-Assyrian military forces, we suggest that the place of manufacture of both armours was the Neo-Assyrian Empire. If this supposition is correct, then the Yanghai armour is one of the rare actual proofs of West-East technology transfer across the Eurasian continent during the first half of the first millennium BCE, when social and economic transformation accelerated.

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In order to study creative design of fiber art clothing, this paper expounds the basic concept and research status of fiber art at home and abroad, combines fiber art, clothing design techniques, fiber materials and clothing design method, and combines with design case study, finally analyzes that the fiber art and clothing design has potential value including art value, economic value and cultural value.