While vegetable-tanned leather from young animals falls
to pieces, objects made from thick and hard leather, such
as harness and heavy boots, are less liable to signi;cant deterioration
by microorganisms. This also applies to leather
which has lain in the earth for a long time, e.g. archaeological
leather, resulting from vegetable tans reacting with iron
salts present in the earth and forming very stable ferro-tan
complexes. That is why archaeological museum collections
possess large numbers of pieces of footwear, harness, etc.