Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

What’S Hiding In The Spine? A Study Of Adhesives In Medieval Books Using Mass Spectrometry, Alice Hutton Sharp, Sarah Fiddyment, Anne Lama, Jessica Lockhart, Deborah Meert-Williston, Melissa Moreton, Lauren Williams, Alexandra Gillespie

Western Libraries Publications

Glues, and in particular glued spines, are notable features of late medieval European books, yet little research has been done into how they were sourced, produced, and used. In this article we present preliminary results from using the paleoproteomic methods of Electromagnetic Zooarchaeology through Mass Spectrometry (eZooMS) and Peptide Mass Fingerprinting (PMF) to identify the source species for animal glues used in late medieval books. We first introduce readers to the principal kinds of glue used in medieval craftsmanship and what is known about their use in bookbinding, principally from the discipline of book conservation. We describe the micro-sampling methods …