Proteomics analysis of the soil textile imprints from tomb M6043 of the Dahekou Cemetery site in Yicheng County, Shanxi Province, China

Proteomics has made important contributions to identify protein residues from ancient burials, especially for those archeological remains that have severely degraded. These analysis methods make it possible to identify the raw materials of textile imprints found in archeological sites and allow the imprints to be a new archeological material that can compensate for the lack of evidence of early silk artifacts. In this study, liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) in proteomics was used to analyze the textile imprints found in the tomb M6043 from the Dahekou Cemetery site (1046 BC–771 BC) in China. A combination of accurate mass and time (AMT) tags and peptide sequencing was used to identify the fiber type of the textile imprints. The AMT tag analysis results suggested that some organic residues from the archeological samples had a similar structure to the peptides in modern silk. Five different types of silk fibroin peptides determined that the archeological soil samples contained silk protein residues. Based on the proteomics analysis results, it can be determined that the raw material of the textile imprints from tomb M6043 of the Dahekou Cemetery site was silk fiber. Combining the location and the microtopography observation results of the textile imprints, it can be speculated that these imprints were probably residual traces of the pall, which were generally called “Huang Wei (荒帷)” in ancient China. This study shows that proteomics can play an important role in studying archeological protein residues, and textile soil imprints can be used as archeological materials for ancient textile research.