Leather and Leatherworking

part of the ‘Craft, Industry and Everyday Life’ series

by Quita Mould, Ian Carlisle and Esther Cameron

This volume presents the surviving evidence for the manufacture and use of leather artefacts at York during the Anglo-Scandinavian and medieval periods.

It is based around the internationally important group of Anglo-Scandinavian leatherwork from 16–22 Coppergate. There is a summary of the excavations that produced the leather artefacts as well as a description of the nature of the individual leather-bearing deposits which attempts to identify possible workshop waste.

While a general outline of the methods of shoemaking, sheath and scabbard making and the decorative techniques employed is given, the leather items themselves are described in more detail. Also included is a summary of the Anglo-Scandinavian shoe and sheath assemblages in context to the Anglo-Saxon background and contemporary material elsewhere in the British Isles, as well as similarities between York leather assemblages and those recovered throughout north-west Europe.

This book is out of print but is now available online from York Archaeological Trust.