Rawhide Shield Edging

[Tarbicus]

Here are the very words from the Final Report of the excavations at Dura Europos:

P. 163:

The semicylindrical 629 had strips of leather 35-50 mm wide sewn over its edges. The stitching for such edging is still in situ on 631, although the skin itself is gone. It was added after the gesso. As mentioned above, apart from protecting the edge of the wood from wear and tear the edging also prevented the ply from springing open. Extra pieces of leather were attached to the vulnerable corners of 629 with rawhide, but no trace of these is to be seen on 631.

Note the extra leather on the corners was attached with rawhide.

P. 168:

A common find on European military sites is copper alloy edge-binding strip from shields .... It is completely lacking at Dura, where shields had a stitched leather edging.

For the bossed oval shields Simon James acknowledges that leather or rawhide could have been used for edging (NB: he differentiates between the two - very important). None of that edging survives and the original notes are vague.