The Armour Archive

Dan Howard

There are heaps of mail variants. The artist might be trying to depict two different styles of mail. Maybe a denser weave or different link sizes.

Dan Howard

If people consider the likely possibility that a lot of medieval mail had integrated padded liners then the problem goes away We also need to use consistent terminology. Personally I use "aketon" when referring to a garment that is designed to be worn under mail and "gambeson" wh...

Dan Howard

IMO a great deal of historical mail was lined. Certainly a lot more than we assume today. It helps to explain why we don't see much evidence for dedicated arming garments for mail in many cultures. Dan, You don't think wear, tear, filth, and "layering" are significant factors in whether or...

Dan Howard

That's brilliant. I haven't seen that one before.

Dan Howard

They are too ambiguous to be useful. Cambrensis for example uses the phrase laminis ferreis arte consutis . It could refer to scale or lamellar or even a COP or segmented-type construction. All you can really say is that it was iron and that it wasn't mail. Some of the sagas refer to "spangabry...

Dan Howard

The entire point of the article, from what I can tell, is merely to suggest that linen armor was actually used by classical Greek armies Unfortunately none of the sources he lists does this except tangentially - a couple of cites say that linen armour was by looted by Greeks from oriental sources. ...

Dan Howard

Len Parker wrote:So what your telling me is that leather was never worn by itself as armour.

Where does he say that? All he is saying is that the reference you cited is probably not the best support for the theory.

Dan Howard

There is only one example of lamellar that is vaguely relevant. It was found at Birka. It has been identified as Asian in origin but it is impossible to tell who might have worn it since it was not found in a grave.

Dan Howard

talaananthes wrote:Oh, and fwiw, here's the list of ancient references for cloth armour he sent me:

None of which mention glue and the vast majority of them are oriental in context, not Greek.

Dan Howard

I'd welcome an example of glued laminated armour from any culture. I've been looking for a long time and doubt they ever existed. H.R. Robinson wrote about laminated paper armour in "Oriental Armour". It was used by the Chinese, and if I remember correctly made of up to 14 layers of paper...

Dan Howard

All you need to do is look at modern kendo armour to see how rigid quilted armour can be. It all depends on how the stitching is done.

Dan Howard

Ernst wrote:The iron armor of Philip II of Macedonia--

http://www.makedonia.com.fr/armure%20de%20philip.jpg

Looks as if the armour belongs to Philip III Arrhidaeus, not Philip II. See E. N. Borza and O. Palagia, "The Chronology of the Royal Macedonian Tombs at Vergina," JdI 123 (2008).

Dan Howard

There is only one surviving fragment of Greek linen armour (recently found at Patras) and that is quilted (about 10-15 layers). There are plenty of examples of layered textile armours from all over the world and they are all quilted too. I'd welcome an example of glued laminated armour from any cult...

Dan Howard

The test is a wasted opportunity. Greek linen armour was made like all other layered textile armour. It was quilted, not glued. If the resources for the above test were spent on quilted linen, it could have made a valuable contribution. Another point: very few of the 27 citations mentioned in that a...

Dan Howard

I believe this is an error. Podzor is a general term for edge decorations. It is used for the decorated edges of bed sheets and in traditional Russian architecture for a decorative board added to window panes and such. Many thanks for the correction. There is a term in those same books for underarm...

Dan Howard

The question seems to be whether the Russians had a garment specifically designed to be worn under mail (English terms would include aketon or pourpoint ) or whether they simply wore regular clothing under mail. IIRC they had a specific term for this garment - pozdor . They also had standalone cloth...

Dan Howard

When was plate used pre-segmentata in Europe? Wasn't aware of that. Edumacate me. The earliest is the Dendra Panoply dating to the 15th C BC, which is about the same time that scale armour becomes widespread. m There are also at least two surviving iron cuirasses predating segmentata by a couple of...

Dan Howard

Scale predates the earliest plate armor (lorica segmentata) by at least a couple hundred years. Scale predates sergmentata by over a thousand years but plate armour was worn just as early. Segmentata was by no means the earliest form of plate. It was peasant armour mass-produced for those who could...

Dan Howard

(He missed the bit about mail often being rows of riveted links interwoven with punched rings, too, reducing the "fail points" greatly.). I didn't miss it. It isn't relevant. You can get commercial mail made of alternate rows, and in any case it doesn't make much of a difference in protec...

Dan Howard

And I shouldn't do that because the riveted maille we have today is... better? Because it is. Much better. Hardly. Here are eight points to start with, all of which reduce its effectiveness against weapons. * The thickness of the wire is generally too light for the diameter of the link, making it l...

Dan Howard

Very nearly that entire post makes no sense, or, alternately, is demonstrably incorrect. In order for scale to provide the same level of protection as riveted mail it would need to be heavier. Don't confuse the crappy riveted mail that is being sold today with what was actually worn historically in...

Dan Howard

I'm not sure that anyone here thinks that scale was never worn in western Europe. The contention is that mail was far far more common.

Dan Howard

Baron Conal wrote:Maybe the questions in this debate should be would a leather breastplate protect any better than a quilted 'shirt'

Williams has already demonstrated that quilted linen provides better protection than cuirbouilli.

Dan Howard

As for being a stickler about the whole ideology myself, I'm personally exploring designs of different body defenses made of leather for my bronze age Mycenaean impression based almost solely on fragmentary bronze articles that are believed to have been decorative additions to some kinds of composi...

Dan Howard

Kel's right though. Please consider buying a new copy of the book from the Museum of Leathercraft. The money is put to a good and noble cause.

Dan Howard

... which is exactly why I am wondering about the book in question. I think it would be fairly difficult for a leather breastplate to survive more than a few hundred years. This is a bollocks argument. There are literally tons of leather artefacts dating to the Roman period from shoes to leather te...

Dan Howard

There are also finds of butted mail - whole shirts if I remember correctly, in "New World" Spanish contexts (round about 16th century I believe) What was the condition of this find? Most examples of mail are nothing but rusted lumps. There are plenty of instances where initial reports of ...

Dan Howard

I don't think there is any evidence for leather breastplates in Western Europe until the 12th century and that is in the Chanson d'Antioch (c.1185). There is no physical evidence for leather breastplates at all from the Roman period onwards.

Dan Howard

Read the article that was linked earlier in this thread.

Dan Howard

People consider me to be anally pedantic but I have no problem with butted mail for what you are trying to do. Superficially it has the right look, it is a good way to learn to make mail, and it won't bother the neighbours. Get the weaving process down. Learn about tailoring and how to do expansions...

Dan Howard

The big thing to remember is that there has been an inversion: Historically, the material was expensive, and labor was cheap. Today, the material is plentiful, but labor is expensive as hell. Definitely. People need to consider the labour involved and the quality of the material required to produce...

Dan Howard

Keep in mind that for most of history the most common threat on the battlefield was from spears and arrows. Any armour would need to provide protection against these weapons before any other.

Dan Howard

Baron Alcyoneus wrote:I recall reading that the Romans had mail as small as 1/8" ID. That was probably butted, I can't imagine it being riveted.

It was riveted - one of the advantages of slave labour.

Dan Howard

I think we have some evidence of early (bronze age, early iron age) butted mail There is no evidence of mail at all dating this early. The earliest example of mail is currently the Horny Jatov example which dates to the first half of the third century BC and it is riveted. The Cuimnesti example was...

Dan Howard

All of the examples of early mail that have been properly analysed (i.e. x-ray analysis) have turned out to be riveted, not butted. Butted mail was used in battle - 18th C Sudan is one example of butted 4-in-1 that comes to mind. I can't think of any examples dating earlier than this. a lot of Japan...