Leather tongue with woollen pile decoration.

Leather tongue made of three to five strips superimposed and sewn together along half their length. The unsewn ends are rounded and along the edge of each there are three semicircular perforations. The sewn ends are roughly cut off. On one of the sewn halves there are three rows of wololen pile in red, dark blue and yellow. The reverse shows the remains of red lacquer.

Stein Textile Loan Collection. On loan from the Government of India and the Archaeological Survey of India. Copyright: Government of India.

According to Stein this leather object may once been tongue of saddle or harness strap.

The Limes are a line of defensive walls and beacon towers north of Dunhuang. They extend the wall completed by Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi (259-210 BC) in 214 BC as a barrier against the Xiongnu. Under the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD) the walls were carried 1,000 miles to the west, to the easternmost edge of the Tarim Basin. The Limes protected China's trade and military colonies and served as a base for expansion into Central Asia. They were made of stamped clay and gravel, alternating with layers with wood, to protect against corrosion by wind-blown sand. They were completed in less than a century with water carried over huge distances. Behind the walls lay a series of watchtowers. These housed small numbers of soldiers who watched the desert and signalled to armies stationed at nearby Dunhuang through a system of couriers and fire signals. Within the towers Stein found an astounding range of artefacts, which provide a glimpse of garrison life and military operations under the Han empire, including bronze mirrors, coarse pottery, tools, leather armour, weapons, shoes, and clothing. Ancient documents included personal letters on silk and wood; military directives and supply lists; and treatises on a range of subjects, including medicine and astrology. The V&A holds, on loan, several utilitarian textile fragments, parts of shoes and several pottery shards from the sites, dating from the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD) to the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 AD).

This leather fragment consists of several layers sewn together with decorative strips of wool pile along one surface. It was probably used as the tongue of a saddle or harness strap. It was recovered from the site known as The Limes Watchtowers, a line of fortified encampments designed to ensure the safe transit of goods across the area and dating from 200BC to AD400.
The site is part of an area now referred to as 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 their 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.
These fragments were 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. The textiles range in date from the second century BC to the twelfth century AD. Some are silk while others are made from the wool of a variety of different animals.

LOAN:STEIN.625