assumed that the earliest method of curing hides in prehistory consisted
of drying skins through smoking, or smoking combined with the appli-
cation of layers of fat. Vegetable tanning is hard to detect, particularly if
ancient samples were preserved in waterlogged conditions, where they
might be subjected to secondary tanning. Intentional tanning involves
bathing or submerging skins in tannin-rich vegetable infusions, includ-
ing oak bark or galls, which contain very high concentrations of natural
tannin. Theophrastus (Caus. Plant. 3.8.6) clearly knew about the prop-
erties of oak galls and refers in passing to their application in tanning.
The kind of knowledge that his botanical descriptions display reflects a
very good awareness of the tanning properties of these seemingly
unlikely natural sources.^123 Very few leather fragments survive from
the Aegean area, where conditions for the preservation of organic
remains are far less common than in waterlogged or anaerobic condi-
tions in northern Europe. However, a number of leather items have been
noted in the course of excavations over the last century in central Thrace.
A leather helmet was recovered from Golyamata Mogila, Duvanli, in the
1930s, and a leather jerkin, with an associated belt and thongs for a
scabbard, from Lasar Stanevo, near Lovech, in the 1980s.^124 Nothing can
be said about the methods by which these items were preserved, although
the survival of large pieces of leather over almost two and a half thousand
years speaks very positively for conditions that involved some level of
dampness, even if the air in these contexts was sealed. In addition to this
evidence, several fragments of leather and fur have recently been ana-
lyzed scientifically during the museum conservation process.^125 What is
more, they provide some chronological parameters for understanding
changing processes. Diana Nikolova studiedfibres from earth samples
recovered from a mound burial near Beliš, in the area of Troyan (north-
ern Bulgaria), which contained pieces of Baltic amber, as well as a large
collection of bronze ornaments. Red (made using madder,rubia tinc-
toria), dark blue (indigo), pink, and undyedfibres were detected in hemp
or linen threads. A few purple threads were identified as murex–dyed.
Leather straps, likewise dyed with extract of madder, and indigo (from an
survey of the classical sources and evidence from artefacts, with classical Greek contexts,
including Homer and Herodotus, esp. I. 71, 171, 194, 202; 2. 86–8, 121, 141; 3. 9, 133;- 61–79, 89–92; 189; 5. 58; Theophr.Caus. Plant.3. 8. 6; 9. 1; 14, 3; 18, 5; Leguilloux 2002,
on the Pompeian manufactory.
(^123) D. W. T.‘Oak galls in Theophrastus’,Nature139 (1937) 684–4.
(^124) Archibald 1998, 199–201 with refs and 164fig. 6.8; TPQfinal quarter of thefifth
centurybcfor the burial in Golyamata Mogila; the burial from Lasar Stanevo i slightly later.
(^125) Nikolova, 2008, esp. 196–8.
Thelongue duréein the north Aegean 189