PNAS:子宫犊皮纸的物种鉴定

摘要 : 英国约克大学科研人员提出了关于羊皮纸的动物来源的中世纪之谜的一个解。

英国约克大学科研人员提出了关于羊皮纸的动物来源的中世纪之谜的一个解。子宫犊皮纸是用于口袋圣经的一种薄羊皮纸，13世纪的欧洲制造了数以千计的这种口袋圣经。学者长久以来对这种羊皮纸是否来自牛和羊的胎儿皮、兔或松鼠等更小的哺乳动物或者应用于传统动物皮的专门的生产技术有争论。Sarah Fiddyment及其同事开发了一种用于识别羊皮纸的动物来源的非侵入式技术。首先用一种非磨损型聚氯乙烯橡皮擦拭这种羊皮纸。然后从橡皮渣碎片里提取了胶原蛋白，用传统的质谱仪对其进行了分析，从而确定来源物种。这组作者使用这种技术分析了来自72本13世纪的口袋圣经的220份样本，结果发现所有这些样本来自牛犊、山羊或绵羊皮，没有兔或松鼠等预期外的物种的证据。随着这些羊皮纸的地理来源不同，具体使用的动物也各异。这种地理变化的模式类似于在其他种类的羊皮纸中发现的变化，并且看上去反映了当地的牲畜可用度。这组作者说，这些结果提示，子宫犊皮纸是利用一种特殊的生产工艺，用传统动物皮制造的，而不是来自未出生的动物的皮或者其他动物的皮。

原文链接：

Animal origin of 13th-century uterine vellum revealed using noninvasive peptide fingerprinting

原文摘要：

Tissue-thin parchment made it possible to produce the first pocket Bibles: Thousands were made in the 13th century. The source of this parchment, often called “uterine vellum,” has been a long-standing controversy in codicology. Use of the Latin term abortivum in many sources has led some scholars to suggest that the skin of fetal calves or sheep was used. Others have argued that it would not be possible to sustain herds if so many pocket Bibles were produced from fetal skins, arguing instead for unexpected alternatives, such as rabbit. Here, we report a simple and objective technique using standard conservation treatments to identify the animal origin of parchment. The noninvasive method is a variant on zooarchaeology by mass spectrometry (ZooMS) peptide mass fingerprinting but extracts protein from the parchment surfAce by using an electrostatic charge GENErated by gentle rubbing of a PVC eraser on the membrane surface. Using this method, we analyzed 72 pocket Bibles originating in France, England, and Italy and 293 additional parchment samples that bracket this period. We found no evidence for the use of unexpected animals; however, we did identify the use of more than one mammal species in a single manuscript, consistent with the local availability of hides. These results suggest that ultrafine vellum does not necessarily derive from the use of abortive or newborn animals with ultrathin hides, but could equally well reflect a production process that allowed the skins of maturing animals of several species to be rendered into vellum of equal quality and fineness.

doi: 10.1073/PNAS.1512264112

作者：Sarah Fiddyment

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