True or False: Parchment was expensive, so reuse (palimpsests) could happen.

The story behind the answer

Parchment—treated animal skin—was costly and labor-intensive to make, so scribes sometimes scraped or washed off earlier text to write anew, creating a palimpsest. This conserved scarce resources, especially in monasteries where demand for service books and scholastic texts was high. Because traces of the original ink often remained, modern techniques like multispectral imaging and UV light can recover the undertext.

These hidden layers have revealed treasures such as the Archimedes Palimpsest, preserving unique mathematical works, as well as fragments of classical literature and early biblical texts. Palimpsests show both medieval thrift and shifting priorities, with older or “less useful” texts overwritten by liturgy, theology, or legal compilations.