Material Characterisation of Museum-Held Textile-Related Objects from the Qiuci Museum Collection, Xinjiang, China: Fibre Groups, Dye Markers and Surface Residues

Museum-held textile-related heritage materials can preserve evidence of fibre selection, weaving, dyeing, surface residues and object contact, but heterogeneous provenance and uneven documentation may limit direct reconstruction of regional textile production. This study presents a material characterisation of sixteen textile-related samples from the Qiuci Museum collection in Xinjiang, China, including Ming-Qing museum storage textiles, fragments associated with the ‘Qiuci Beauty’ assemblage from the Subashi Buddhist Temple, Qing garment yarns and an undated textile residue attached to an iron object. Textile-structure recording, scanning electron microscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry were combined to examine weave structure, fibre morphology, fibre group, dye markers and surface-associated materials. The results identify cotton, wool and silk fibres, predominantly 1/1 plain weave, and one structurally distinctive wool textile preserving a weft-faced twill or satin-like structure. Dye analysis revealed indigoid compounds, protoberberine alkaloids, flavonoids and anthraquinones, with mixed marker profiles in KF-3, KF-4 and MN-6 consistent with complex colour histories involving combined dye components and/or differential colour preservation. Gold-coloured foil-like fragments, gypsum-bearing deposits and brown particulate deposits associated with the textile residue attached to the iron object further show that decoration, mineral accretion, object contact and post-depositional or post-recovery alteration form part of the material history of the corpus. The study documents the material characteristics and conservation-relevant features of this heterogeneous museum-held corpus, while keeping differences in provenance, chronology and object association explicit.