This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Textile Conservation Science examines the physical and chemical makeup of historical fabrics, their fibers, their dyes and their weave, to determine how old a textile actually is and where and how it was made. Where a textile's style or context might suggest a rough period, chemical and physical analysis of its fibers and dyes can date it directly and can identify a dye source or a fiber type specific enough to point to a particular region or trade network, evidence a visual inspection alone cannot supply.
Its method draws on both physical examination, weave structure and fiber degradation, and chemical analysis, dye composition and fiber identification under magnification or by chemical test, applied specifically to historical fabrics rather than to textiles in general. The field is a branch of Conservation Science, the broader natural science discipline concerned with the physical study and preservation of cultural and historical material, and like its parent field it belongs among the natural sciences rather than the humanities, since its evidence is drawn from direct physical and chemical testing of the object itself.
The field took shape as a distinct scientific pursuit around 1950, as conservation science generally began applying instrumental analysis to museum and archaeological textiles rather than relying on connoisseurship and documentary record alone. Its subject remains the material textile itself, a relic's fibers and dyes read as physical evidence of its age, its origin and the conditions that have preserved or degraded it since it was made.