About This Artifact
More than fifteen pieces of leather were recovered from the spoils of borehole H-8 in the Money Pit area during Season 5. At Saint Mary's University, Dr. Christa Brosseau examined the fragments under a scanning electron microscope and identified one side as dimpled animal skin, while the other showed bundled textile fibres spun together and bonded to the leather, a construction consistent with bookbinding. Rick Lagina described the bookbinding material as the most intriguing of all the H-8 artefacts tested to that point.
Medieval bookbinding expert Joe Landry and his apprentice Katherine Taylor examined the fragments at the Dawson Printshop at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax. Landry immediately identified the scraps as genuine parchment and vegetable-tanned calf leather, consistent with materials used in bound volumes capable of surviving for two thousand years. He noted that vegetable tanning, a process using solutions derived from bark, produces extremely durable leather of the type used in manuscript production from the medieval period through the eighteenth century. At the Oak Island Research Centre, Doug Crowell and Paul Troutman had earlier examined similar fragments from H-8 under a digital microscope at up to two thousand times magnification and identified traces of red and yellow pigment resembling the illuminated drop caps used in medieval manuscripts, where large decorative letters marked the opening of chapters in religious texts.
The leather bookbinding fragments lent support to the longstanding theory that the Money Pit contains manuscripts rather than, or in addition to, monetary treasure. Proposed connections have included documents linked to Sir Francis Bacon and William Shakespeare, Freemasonic records, and Knights Templar archives. In Season 7, fragments of leather resembling the bookbinding found in H-8 were recovered from borehole 8-A at approximately 103 feet, within what the team identified as the Shaft Six tunnel that connects directly to the original Money Pit.
Historical Context
Lagina team
Where It Was Found
Found at Borehole H8 spoils, Money Pit — the original 1795 excavation shaft on Oak Island, Nova Scotia.
