Animal origin of 13th-century uterine vellum revealed using noninvasive peptide fingerprinting

Sarah Fiddyment (1) , Bruce Holsinger (2) , Chiara Ruzzier (3) , Alexander Devine (4) , Annelise Binois (5, 6, 7) , Umberto Albarella (8) , Roman Fischer (9) , Emma Nichols (10) , Antoinette Curtis (11) , Edward Cheese (12) , Matthew D. Teasdale (13) , Caroline Checkley-Scott (14) , Stephen J. Milner (15) , Kathryn M. Rudy (16) , Eric J. Johnson (17) , Jiří Vnouček (18) , Mary Garrison (1) , Simon Mcgrory (1) , Daniel G Bradley (19) , Matthew J. Collins (1)

1 University of York [York, UK]
2 University of Virginia
3 UCL - Université Catholique de Louvain = Catholic University of Louvain
4 Department of Anthropology [University of Pennsylvania]
5 ArScAn - Archéologies et Sciences de l'Antiquité
6 Archéologies environnementales
7 UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
8 University of Sheffield [Sheffield]
9 University of Oxford
10 Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation [University of Washington]
11 Norfolk Record Office
12 The Fitzwilliam Museum
13 Smurfit Institute of Genetics
14 The University of Manchester Library
15 University of Manchester [Manchester]
16 University of St Andrews [Scotland]
17 OSU - Ohio State University [Columbus]
18 The Royal Library
19 Smurfit Institute of Genetics

Tissue-thin parchment made it possible to produce the first pocket Bibles: Thousands were made in the 13th century. The source of this parchment, often called “uterine vellum,” has been a long-standing controversy in codicology. Use of the Latin term abortivum in many sources has led some scholars to suggest that the skin of fetal calves or sheep was used. Others have argued that it would not be possible to sustain herds if so many pocket Bibles were produced from fetal skins, arguing instead for unexpected alternatives, such as rabbit. Here, we report a simple and objective technique using standard conservation treatments to identify the animal origin of parchment. The noninvasive method is a variant on zooarchaeology by mass spectrometry (ZooMS) peptide mass fingerprinting but extracts protein from the parchment surface by using an electrostatic charge generated by gentle rubbing of a PVC eraser on the membrane surface. Using this method, we analyzed 72 pocket Bibles originating in France, England, and Italy and 293 additional parchment samples that bracket this period. We found no evidence for the use of unexpected animals; however, we did identify the use of more than one mammal species in a single manuscript, consistent with the local availability of hides. These results suggest that ultrafine vellum does not necessarily derive from the use of abortive or newborn animals with ultrathin hides, but could equally well reflect a production process that allowed the skins of maturing animals of several species to be rendered into vellum of equal quality and fineness.

Domaines: Sciences de l'Homme et Société; Archéologie et Préhistoire

Sarah Fiddyment, Bruce Holsinger, Chiara Ruzzier, Alexander Devine, Annelise Binois, et al.. Animal origin of 13th-century uterine vellum revealed using noninvasive peptide fingerprinting. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2015, 112 (49), pp.15066-15071. ⟨10.1073/pnas.1512264112⟩. ⟨hal-02881917⟩