The detection of deterioration degree of ancient silk fabrics will be helpful to the selection and development of conservation methods. The aim of this paper is to select the effective methods suitable for measuring the deterioration extent of ancient silk fabrics, and it is hoped that the detection methods will need small amount of samples, be sensitive, and be nondestructive as far as possible. Based on the physical and chemical properties, the detection methods of the deterioration degree of silk fabrics were researched. The silk samples were artificially aged by simulating three main natural aging factors: light, heat and hydrolysis. With these samples, the analytical techniques that are potential useful for the quantitative assessment of silk damage wer studied systematically, such as tensile strength, color difference, amino analysis, infra-red spectrometry, thermal analysis, viscometry, X-ray diffraction, scan electron microscope, etc. The results of research show that viscometry is a more sensitive, economic and simple method for the detection of ancient silk fabrics. In addition, amino acids analysis is also effective for the analysis of silk fabrics. The infra-red spectrometry and thermal analysis need small amount of sample, so they will be useful if more sensitive indicator were determined. There is limitation in suing X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscope for detection, and more research work need to be done. -- MCI