Species identification of archaeological skin objects from Danish bogs

Denmark has an extraordinarily large and well-preserved collection of archaeological skin garments found in peat bogs, dated to approximately 920 BC - AD 775. These objects provide not only the possibility to study prehistoric skin costume and technologies, but also to investigate the animal species used for production of skin garments. Until recently, species identification of archaeological skin was mainly performed by light and scanning electron microscopy or analysis of ancient DNA. However, the efficacy of these methods can be limited due to the harsh, mostly acidic environment of peat bogs leading to morphological and molecular degradation within the samples. We compared species assignment results of twelve archaeological skin samples from Danish bogs using Mass Spectrometry (MS)-based peptide sequencing, against results obtained using light and scanning electron microscopy

丹麦泥炭沼泽中出土了数量极为庞大且保存完好的考古皮制服饰藏品，年代约为公元前920年至公元775年。此类遗存不仅为研究史前皮制服饰与制作技术提供了重要契机，还可用于探究皮制服饰生产所用的动物物种。直至近期，考古皮制样本的物种鉴定主要通过光学显微镜、扫描电子显微镜分析，或是古代DNA检测来完成。然而，泥炭沼泽普遍严苛的酸性环境会导致样本发生形态学与分子降解，因此上述方法的应用效果往往受到限制。本研究针对12件丹麦泥炭沼泽出土的考古皮制样本，采用基于质谱（Mass Spectrometry，MS）的肽段测序法进行物种鉴定，并将所得结果与光学显微镜、扫描电子显微镜分析的结果进行了对比。