Princess Ukok's Awesome Outfit: Textiles from the Bronze Age

 
A female bronze-age shaman's luxurious garments, perfectly preserved in ice for over 2,500 years.

Princess Ukok, the Siberian or Altai Princess, is the famous mummy found in 1993 by Dr. Natialia Polosmak in a kurgan (subterranean tomb made of logs) that had been frozen solid for over 2,500 years. The woman is from the Pazyryk culture in the Republic of Altai, Russia. 

The Ukok Plateau is STUNNINGLY beautiful, and is still considered a sacred place by inhabitants today.

Here's a post about princess ukok's wig!

Okay! The clothes! The clothing worn by the mummy were incredibly well preserved. Dr. Polosmak was able to perform very detailed analysis of the textiles.

Please note: It's shockingly difficult to find any detailed information, including illustrations or photographs of the actual clothing/textiles. I'm doing the best I can, here. :)

Here's a link to Polosmak's book about the textiles. It's only available in Russian, and it's wicked expensive. But I would still like to have it!

I did find this and a great article with some good references from Science.

Diagram of the burial: 1 — upper part of the headdress, 2 — wooden birds, 3 — hairpin, 4 — stone dish with coriander seeds, 5 — wooden deer, 6 — wooden casings for braids, 7 — golden earring, 8 — fragment of wooden necklace, 9 — necklace with snow leopard heads, 10 — silk skirt, 11 — lace, 12 — skirt, 13 — beads, 14 — mirror in a felt bag, 15 — tassel of horse hair, 16 — felt stocking-boots. Drawing by E. Shumakova

The skirt

Ukok wore a 57-inch long skirt constructed of three horizontal strips of sheep and camel wool cloth. The hem of the skirt is 44 inches wide, and the waist is 35 inches. Each strip was hand-dyed separately. The top strip was crimson red, the second a pinkish-yellowish, and the bottom a deep burgundy. 

The belt

The skirt was held at the waist or under the bust with a woolen braided and tasseled belt. 

The blouse

She wore a very fine yellow tussah silk blouse with red piping. The blouse was of a Chinese design and construction, but did not come from China. Instead, the fabric was likely made in Assam, India from wild silkworms.

In an interview for "Ice Mummies: Siberian Ice Maiden" (aired 1998, Nova, PBS), Dr. Regular Schorta, Director of the prestigious Abegg Stiftung Museum and specialist in Chinese and and Central Asian textiles remarked:

The blouse of the Ice Maiden was certainly not made of domesticated silk, and probably it was really wild silk, tussah silk, because you have here really larger fiber which are much thicker and more ribbon-like and have a surface which is a little bit ribbed. What's interesting is that we know from China at this period only about domesticated silk. So it might point to the fact that the silk of the blouse doesn't come from China, but perhaps from another area, and India actually be a strong candidate.

Full-scale reproductions at the National Museum of  A.V. Anokhin, in Russia. The skirt seems more accurate than the depiction above, and you can really see her tasseled belt here.

The jacket

A marten fur kaftan-style coat with long, narrow sleeves and a longer hemline in the back than in the front. 

Full-scale reproductions at the National Museum of  A.V. Anokhin, in Russia. The jacket is more visible here.

Check out the appliques on her jacket. 

The boots

She also wore above-the-knee white felt boots with red appliques. I like them and would wear them myself.

The necklace

She wore a choker of carved wooden camels. I also would totally wear this.


Here's some interesting information on the dyes used in the Pazyryk textiles, but can't tell you the citation because it's in Russian! 

These dyes were produced mainly from animal or plant sources, including Murex and related mollusks (dibromindigo), coccids, madder root (alizarin and purpurin), and indigo, which are not found anywhere in the Gorniy Altai or the environs. The most probable natural habitat for the sources of the colorants identified in the Pazyryk textiles is the eastern Mediterranean region. Note that one of the identified coccids (Kermes vermilio) can be found only on several species of oak near the Mediterranean and the Murex mollusk can be also found only in the Mediterranean region.

None of the plant or mineral dyes readily available in the Gorniy Altai and environs were used to dye the textiles found in the Pazyryk mounds. The textiles preserved in Pazyryk mounds were dyed and obviously manufactured at workshops far away from the Altai, at famous weaving and dyeing centers around the Mediterranean. 

Everything about this woman is fascinating. They've just found that she died of breast cancer, and were able to make great inferences about the last few months of her life. Check out this article in the Siberian Times for a summary. 

interested in ancient textiles? click here for more textile research.