Material witness to Chinese Celts
	Plaid truth: Professor Elizabeth Barber holding a replica of the Chinese cloth beside a replica of the Hallstatt cloth.
By Shelly Simonds In the spring of 1994, Professor Elizabeth Wayland Barber, one of the world's foremost experts on ancient textiles and a recent visitor to the ANU, was called upon to study an amazing find. Archaeologists in China had unearthed dozens of pre-historic mummies buried in elaborate and colourful cloths in Western China. What made the find so astounding was that, not only had the bodies been so well preserved, but they appeared to be Westerners, not Asians. Some were wearing plaid twills, remarkably similar to those worn by the ancient Celts in Europe - adding fuel to the wild rumours which had begun to circulate in academic circles about the mummies. Prof Barber was asked to look at the excavated material in China by archaeologist Victor Mair, who needed her expertise analysing the textiles. Prof Barber gladly accepted the opportunity to study some of the oldest textiles ever unearthed. "It's an incredibly important find from a textile perspective because we really have very few artefacts of clothing until the Renaissance," she said. The mummies were found in three major sites near Urumchi in Chinese Turkestan with carbon dating showing the earliest lived in about 2000BC or 4000BP (before present). A man and three women were entombed in the most elaborate burial site in Cherchen - which dates to 3000BP. The man was buried with ten different hats including a felt cap with material rolled into the shape of horns, a beret-type hat and a tall, peaked liberty-style hat similar to those made famous during the French Revolution. The controversial plaid twills were found near the city of Hami and date back to 3200BP. They are strikingly similar to Celtic textiles found in a salt mine in Hallstatt, Austria from about the same time. But Prof Barber doubts that the Celts we associate with Scotland and Ireland made it all the way to China. Her theory is that both groups migrated from an ancestral group based in the region above the Caucasus Mountains and the Black sea. "I happen to have Scottish blood myself but, nevertheless, we don't need to jump off the deep end chasing Celts around the world," she said. Prof Barber, also a linguist, said there are similarities between the first written language found in Chinese Turkestan, Tokharian, and other Indo-European languages. Although the Celtic and Tokharian languages have the most in common, their similarity is probably due to archaism rather than innovation. "What is similar about Tokharian and Celtic is that they do not share the innovations of the other Indo-European languages which means they were probably the first ones out of the cannon. One language group went east and one went west," she said. In addition to textiles, evidence of wool and wheat buried with the mummies suggests they were descended from peoples originally from the Mesopotamian basin. Prof Barber is Professor of Archaeology and Linguistics and co-chair of the Classics Program at Occidental College in Los Angeles, California. She is the author of two books: Prehistoric Textiles and Women's Work - the First 20,000 Years. The daughter of a weaver, Dr Barber has had a life-long interest in textiles, learning to sew at the age of four. During her studies in classics and archaeology at Bryn Mawr and Yale, she was drawn to evidence of textile innovation that other archaeologists seemed to overlook. "After my PhD I decided to take up this little project on textiles that would only take a month and result in a 10-page paper. I haven't stopped since." Prof Barber was a guest of the Department of Art History in the Faculty of Arts during a symposium entitled "Textiles, Women and History". Ms Robyn Maxwell, from Art History organised Prof Barber's busy schedule in Canberra which included talks at the Canberra School of Art, the National Gallery and for the friends of the ANU Classics Department.