Real Deal Spolas

[Sean Manning]

I've stopped this project, because I now feel that the spolas was likely made from layers of leather, perhaps water-hardened, instead of oiled and waxed hides.. Rawhide is still too susceptible to moisture, even wrinkling with humidity in the air, though it could be used for scale armour if sealed properly. I am going to suggest something controversial.. I suspect that the white color seen on what could be spolioi in depictions might actually be lead white ground in oil. Here's why: The other white pigments available at the time are too powdery --they would crumble right off the leather, and they don't have the covering power of white lead, as well as being extremely susceptible to moisture. Painted designs wouldn't adhere properly etc.

But like Joe says we don't have evidence for tanned leather anywhere near Greece before the 5th/4th century BCE, and those hardened leather flasks (there were two separate technologies) seem to be a high medieval invention. The shoulder-flap cuirass appears in the sixth century. In cultures with a bit of tanned leather like Viking Age Europe, vegetable tanning is often reserved for thin skins.

I would think that fat/oil curing, for which we have a lot of evidence from early Greece (its in the Iliad ...) and Egypt and the Near East, is more promising.