This fragment is made of plain woven silk clamp-resist dyed in red leaving a cream coloured floral pattern. It is unclear what this textile would have been used for, although it is likely to have been part of a burial shroud. The piece was recovered from the site of Karakhoja, an ancient burial ground where the tombs date from the 3rd to the 8th century AD.

The site is part of an area of Central Asia we now call the Silk Road, a series of overland trade routes that crossed Asia, from China to Europe. The most notable item traded was silk. Camels and horses were used as pack animals and merchants passed the goods from oasis to oasis. The Silk Road was also important for the exchange of ideas – while silk textiles travelled west from China, Buddhism entered China from India in this way.

This textile was brought back from Central Asia by the explorer and archaeologist Sir Marc Aurel Stein (1862-1943). The Victoria and Albert Museum has around 700 ancient and medieval textiles recovered by Stein at the beginning of the twentieth century. Some are silk while others are made from the wool of a variety of different animals.