EXARC Journal (May 2021)
Book Review: Determining Prehistoric Skin Processing Technologies by Theresa Emmerich Kamper
Abstract
This volume on prehistoric tanning technology is the revised and expanded version of the dissertation submitted to Exeter University in 2015. It is noteworthy in that it places experiment at the heart of the entire research programme, thereby radically changing the perspective from which archaeological and ethnographic artefacts might be approached. As the author comments in the Introduction, the original intention was to examine surviving leather artefacts in museum collections in order to establish the sort of processing techniques that had been employed. But in the absence of any previous systematic research into the visible traces left by the different methods, and the unsatisfactory nature of existing physical and chemical analyses, Emmerich was compelled to start afresh and from the very basics, constructing her own standardized reference collection through a carefully constructed series of experiments.
