Use of Leather as armor

[Sean Manning]

Also the argument, its leather and so it rotted.....holds NO water. Many leather items have been found and some in decent enough condition to extrapolate quite plausible means of construction or composition. So something like a musculata which is considerably larger than caligae, would have left some sort of trace somewhere throughout the three civilizations mentioned above.

I would have agreed with that, but I think I remember that Bishop and Coulston disagree, explaining that hide treated in some ways is much more likely to survive in Northern European contexts than hide treated other ways. I think they give some specific examples of Roman army equipment which was treated one way and often survives, and Roman army equipment which was treated another way and is hardly known archaeologically. Just like wool clothing often survives in damp contexts, but linen almost never does. So I don't think this is the best argument. After all, we don't have a lot of evidence for organic tube-and-yoke armours either!