Aleksandr S. Pakhunov*, Irina I. Elkina*, Ekaterina G. Devlet*, Mayke Wagner**, Pavel E. Tarasov***
* Institute of Archaeology RAS, Moscow, Russia (science@pakhunov.com, ira-elkina@yandex.ru, eketek@yandex.ru)
** Deutsches archдologisches Institut, Berlin, Germany (mayke.wagner@dainst.de)
*** Freie Universitдt Berlin, Germany (ptarasov@zedat.fu-berlin.de)

Keywords: research photography, wool, textile, Great Silk Route, Moshchevaya Balka, Yanghai.
This paper considers the application of various photographic techniques used to examine and describe samples of wool from two cemeteries situated on the Great Silk Route, i.e. Yanghai (Xinjiang Uygur/Sinkiang-Uighur autonomous region, Northwest China) and Moshchevaya Balka (Karachai-Circassia, the North Caucasus, Russia). Samples from Yanghai are of local manufacture while those from Moshchevaya Balka are heterogenous: the coarser one is of local manufacture, and the second comes from the Mediterranean. High-resolution photography with the use of a full-spectrum camera and a set of radiation sources spanning from close ultraviolet (UV) to close infrared (IR) range enabled us to give a detailed description of the structure of textile fragments, i.e. to determine the type of the weave, its thread count, and the number of dyes used. Polyangular shadow photography was used to estimate technological characteristics of threads, i.e. the thread and pile thickness, and fabrics, i.e. the thread count. The above-described technique is cheaper than the specialized multispectral systems and easy to handle, and the initial tune-up can be completed in 30 minutes under all conditions, including fieldwork.