Patterns of dermestid damage on hide and fur

I'm wondering if anyone might be able to help me identify evidence
for hide beetle or carpet beetle damage to hides and fur.

I'm currently working as an intern for a university ethnology museum
collection in southern Africa that is undergoing a sort of
renaissance.  It has been neglected and basically defunct for a
decade or two, and those previously responsible for the collection
left it very much in a "junk room" state, with artefacts cluttered,
tangled together and stacked on top of each other in drawers and
cabinets. The cabinets were situated next to open windows, and so
their interiors were thick with dust and extremely dirty when I
first opened them.

I've noticed a pattern of baldness on many of the hide/fur
artefacts. We have Zulu shields, hide-covered horns and hide knife
sheaths, but on many of them there are these striated patterns of
baldness, and it's the first time I've ever seen this kind of bald
pattern on Zulu shields.  Right down to the skin in most places.
Sometimes it occurs in a very large patch, other times it almost
looks like jagged striations going in the direction of the hair
growth.  For some objects, the hair loss is significant, covering
about 50% of the total surface of an object approximately 30cm by
45cm. Is this a pattern consistent with the munching of hungry
dermestids?  If it is the result of insect activity, are there other
signs I should look for?

There were some molted larval casings and sacks still sticking to
some of the objects, only a few, but the stacked, dusty, and crowded
storage conditions makes it hard to determine if there were many
more in the collection.

If this does not sound like a pattern of damage found with hide or
carpet beetles, does anyone have any other idea of what it might be?
So far, I haven't found any ethnographic uses or crafting methods
consistent with this baldness pattern.

Natalie King
University of Toronto, MMSt student


                                  ***
                  Conservation DistList Instance 25:9
                 Distributed: Thursday, August 4, 2011
                        Message Id: cdl-25-9-023
                                  ***