image: (a) Location of Tomb No. 1 at the Wuwangdun site in Huainan, Anhui Province. (b) Uncovered feather decoration from Eastern Chamber I of the tomb. The red box indicates the sampling area shown in c. (c) The sampled flake (WWDF1). Dark blue barbs and brown filaments are indicated by blue and brown dashed outlines, respectively. (d-h) The five species whose feather have been identified from WWDF1. The image of these birds were obtained from BirdLife International (https://www.birdlife.org), including hoopoe (d), black-headed grosbeak (e), yellow-bellied whistler (f), sliver-breasted broadbill (g), common crossbill (h). (i) A short-horned water buffalo jade artifact from the tomb of Fu Hao (13th century BCE) at the Yinxu Site.
Credit: ©Science Bulletin
In ancient Chinese society, feather decorations were frequently used as ritual markers, identity symbols, and visual indicators of social rank. Ancient texts have recorded the flags with feather decorations as well as the spiritual belief of "ascending to immortality as feathered beings", which indicates that feathers have played a crucial role in the spiritual beliefs and shamanistic activities of our ancestors. However, feathers are mainly composed of organic materials such as keratin and degrade easily in complex burial environments, resulting in extremely rare physical feather remains unearthed from archaeological sites and leaving a constant gap in our understanding of their accurate species origins and associated manufacturing techniques..
Tomb No. 1 at the Wuwangdun site, a royal mausoleum of the Chu state from the late Warring States period (the late 3rd century BCE), yielded valuable feather decorations for related studies. The research team successfully identified the biological origins of feather β-keratin and animal glue from the sample using MALDI-TOF-MS and LC-MS/MS techniques. The results show that this decoration was crafted from the feathers of multiple bird species, including the hoopoe, black-headed grosbeak, yellow-bellied whistler, silver-breasted broadbill, and common crossbill. Among them, the hoopoe is particularly striking due to its symbolic significance. The hoopoe is regarded as a sign of good fortune and auspiciousness in Chinese historical records, and is also seen as a guide for the soul and spirit in many civilizations around the world, such as ancient Egypt and Persia. This discovery of feathers with cross-cultural resonance enriches our understanding of the spiritual world of the Chu elite class.
Even more notably, the team identified the adhesive of the feather decorations as animal glue derived from water buffalo. To further confirm its species origin, the researchers conducted additional proteomic analysis on the skeleton from type specimen of the short-horned water buffalo unearthed from the Yinxu site (1300–1046 BCE), and identified the amino acid variants among three different water buffalo species (river buffalo, swamp buffalo, and short-horned water buffalo). Based on these variants, the species origin of the animal adhesive for the feather decoration was identified as the short-horned water buffalo. This study not only fills the gap in the scientific analysis of archaeological feather remains in China but also establishes proteomic identification criteria to distinguish different water buffalo species, providing important molecular basis for further exploring the extinction causes of the local short-horned water buffalo and the introduction of domestic water buffaloes to China.