In Kubrik's Spartacus, the strategy tents for the war campaigns both had maps of Italy drawn onto hides of some kind. The Roman (will find screenshot later) one was more elaborate than the Slave one, but they were both mounted in frames like modern chalkboards.
How real was this as a way of using and presenting maps?
More completely, what is the history of the use of leather or hides for maps? What techniques and tools were used? (Inking, carving, etc.)
What extant maps can I look at if I am wanting to learn this technique? Modern leatherworkers generally use carving, some stamping and a lot of pyrography, the last of which which I am not very partial to.
Any cool examples or specific cultures and histories? Also do not feel constrained to Europe. Any premodern example is very welcome.
Using hides as a writing material dates back very far to antiquity, but it's not called 'leather' then but parchment. They're produced from animal hides but produced in a different manner; leather is tanned by treating it chemically with acidic tannins. Parchment is treated with basic lye and is not chemically altered as much, and scraped to be very thin and hard, as opposed to leather which is supple and more rot-resistant.
Both leather and parchment production involve stretching the hide on a rack though. But the finished product would be taken off. So it's probably a bit of creative license there to make it look a bit more 'primitive'. The map itself in your screenshot there is strikingly modern in its accuracy and detail, and by the fact that it abides the comparatively recent convention of putting north upwards.
The Romans wrote on parchment using a dipped reed pen (quills came later) or calamus (from Greek κάλαμος, meaning 'reed' and 'pen'). Oak gall ink, which was also used well into the modern era, was also used in the Roman era at least by Pliny the Elder's time in the first century CE, as he mentions it.
Parchment was expensive and would never have been used like a blackboard. The Romans (and medieval Europeans) made temporary notes on reusable wax tablets using a pointy stylus.
