There is scant information on scientific ways to treat excavated skin materials. Skin products - including leather, parchment, gut, and other such materials - are complex structures. The author outlines several problems, and states that, in general, skin materials do not lend themselves to in situ conservation. Those found at dry burial sites need little or no treatment; the skins recovered from frozen or terrestrial wet sites should receive treatments whose steps are studied under the following headings: documentation, cleaning, consolidation and lifting, packing, storage and transportation, stabilization, biocides. This paper concludes with a list of needed research and practices.