Workshop scraping seal skins

• Main Author: Dikkenberg, L. van den
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2022
• Subjects: Experimental Archaeology; Use-Wear Analysis; Micro-Wear Analysis; Vlaardingen Culture; Neolithic; Flint; Phoca vitulina
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/1887/3505053; https://www.puttinglife.com/blog/workshop-scraping-seal-skins/

On the 22 nd of October 2022 we hosted a hide-working workshop for the volunteers of Masamuda. The workshop was aimed to gain insight into hide-working traces on Vlaardingen Culture (VLC) scrapers. On the VLC site of Hekelingen III several scrapers were found with hide working traces which potentially could be linked to the scraping of fatty hides with the use of additives (Van Gijn 1990). To test this hypothesis, we scraped two sealskins with flint scrapers using additives. One hide was scraped with sand while the other was scraped with dried clay. The sealskins were donated to the project by Zeehondencentrum Pieterburen, a seal rescue center. These skins belonged to weaners, common seals ( Phoca vitulina ), who died of pneumonia, the skins were removed during the autopsy. We chose to use sealskins because these are notoriously fat and because seal bones were found both in Hekelingen III and in Vlaardingen (Brinkkemper et al. 2010). NWO AIB.19.020 European Prehistory