Unearthed saddle from 2700 years ago shares features with modern-day designs

i May 27, 2023 Share A well-preserved soft leather saddle recovered from the tomb of a woman in China has been dated at up to 2700 years old.The layer also contained a single-handled pottery cup, a braided woolen band, remains of a woolen fabric, and a leather saddle placed on her buttocks as if she was seated on it.The researchers described it as a soft leather saddle composed of two oval-shaped cushion pads with four lens-shaped support elements in each corner and a gullet-like central channel.Most of the deer hair, camel hair and straw used as filling did not survive its time in the grave.

“The saddle features the basic elements of soft saddle construction that are still used today,” Patrick Wertmann and his fellow researchers reported in the journal Archaeological Research in Asia.Tarasov, The earliest directly dated saddle for horse-riding from a mid-1st millennium BCE female burial in Northwest China, Archaeological Research in Asia, Volume 35, 2023, 100451, ISSN 2352-2267, p The study, published under a p , can be read p .