The earliest evidence of red-dyed textile using scale insects was revealed in the caves of the Judean desert.The small textile fragment was excavated in 2016 in the Cave of Skulls in Nahal Se'elim (Ze'elim). I have posted about earlier discoveries in the cave, and in Nahal Se'elim, and the 2016 re-excavation of the cave here, here, and here.According to a new joint study of the Israel Antiquities Authority, Bar-Ilan University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the color of the rare 3,800-year-old textile was produced from the oak scale insects, which the researchers identify with the biblical "Tola‛at Hashani” (scarlet worm).
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The underlying article in the current issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports: Early evidence of an archaeological dyed textile using scale-insects: The Cave of Skulls, Israel. Naama Sukenik, Uri Davidovich, Zohar Amar, Said Abu-Ghosh, Yonah Maor, Roi Porat, Amir Ganor, Eitan Klein, David Iluz.
It is behind a subscription wall, but the INN article is a good summary of it.
Based on the radiocarbon dating, the fragment comes from about 1500-2000 BCE. My own agenda is to add it to the list of very early organic materials discovered in the Judean Desert and elsewhere in Israel (even Megiddo in the more humid north). If a textile fragment survives from the first half of the second millennium BCE in a good enough state that we can tell it is colored with insect dye, it is reasonable to hope that inscribed scroll fragments from the Iron Age stil survive somewhere. Keep looking!
For more on that subject, see the posts collected here.
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