From Nigel Seeley, The National Trust, London
You report the interesting possibility that the reassembly of the fragmentary remains of early manuscripts written on parchment may be facilitated by identifying individual animal skins using DNA analysis (This Week, 14 January).
However, the fragment of the document which you illustrate is clearly on papyrus (also used for many manuscripts from Dead Sea sites), as shown by the pattern of fractures and fibre bundles. The nature of this composite plant material would obviously require a somewhat different approach.
