Overton Downs Experimental Earthworks

Figure 7.9 Wool from Overton Down experimental earthwork recovered after 32 years of burial in a chalk environment inset SEM micrograph showing fungal attack. (Photo Experimental Earthworks Committee/R. C. Janaway. With permission.) (See color insert following p. 178.)...

The two most common natural textile fibers encountered in modern fabrics have contrasting responses to soil burial. Under most soil burial conditions cellulose will degrade rapidly whereas wool will decay at a slower rate. These phenomena are demonstrated by the degradation of textile fibers from the Experimental Earthworks Project (Janaway 1996a). Figures 7.9 and 7.10 compare wool and linen buried in the chalk environments at Overton Down for 32 years. The linen is denatured to the point that there is little surviving morphology, whereas the wool retained some fiber structure. 

---