Leather Cuirass

[caiusbeerquitius]

My five cents, in a purely "methodological" argueing:

Why go through the lengthy process of tanning leather and confer during this process the characteristica flexibility, watertightness and durability to rawhide, which is ductile and inflexible, to then treat the leather again to confer to it the characteristica it had before it was processed? That only makes sense, if rawhide as a product was not available, e.g. in an area, where a material like leather or hide has to be imported.
Rawhide armour as such apparently existed in Anitquity, e.g. the Ligurians used it, as described by Diodorus Siculus.

Apart from that, I see no reason to produce a leather musculata nowadays anyway. It is impossible to make a reconstruction or reproduction of one, since no original exists. As soon as one comes up in an excavation somewhere this would / will change. So far it is nothing but made up, not backed by evidence, hence as realistic as e.g. Roman or Greek paper, or, say, gunpowder.