Continuation of the Lamellar Debate

[Russ Mitchell]

Andrew and I are having a pointed but productive debate on lamellar... unfortunately, it wound up smashing right into another guy's "getting up and running" thread, where the actual discussion was more about "how many plates will I need, etcetera."

So I've pasting the last reply here. I'll clean the whole thing up and add further reply after my next lecture (which I'm going to have to scoot boot in order to be on time).
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I dont think we are derailing a thread regarding the construction of lamellar and scale. Its a perfectly legitimate off shoot to discuss. This is the Design and Construction forum. If we arent or cant make suggestions for the sake of historical understanding...I dont see the point of even posting. Isnt the point to discuss and learn Wink

I havent an axe to grind and am completely amicable about how I approach the argument... but this subject is of particular sensitivity to people who have based their armour or beliefs on flawed SCA or weekend living history type experiments which do not hold a candle to real life, real campaigning and real warefare in terms of the intensity and durability of equipment.

Again...for years thousands of people thought butted hardware store wire could make """real""" mail. We now know better. For years people thought mild steel armour was the equivalent to historical iron or higher carbon steels. We now know better. For years people have used tanned leather for armour, shield rims etc and slowly but surely more and more people are trying painted and treated rawhide and have found its forming ability and incredibly strength to far outweigh tanned leather for some defensive purposes. For years people wore biker boots with big heels because """thats what they wore""" despite any real evidence for these widespread beliefs. We know some types of bargrills existed at least by the late 14th and early 15th century...but they were used en mass or we would find more evidence for it in the art or extant finds.

The same is true with lamellar and scale. When more and more people try connecting it with rings and staples (if they even understand what that means...rather than be intimidated by the concept and doubt it! ) they will understand the gist of my argument against corded lamellar for western european medieval armour.....which is more of a modern anachronism than any real substantial evidence supports.

I do understand what you mean by the technological determinist element Russ but in the case of Byzantium we have found """roman""" lamellar and scale armour held together with rings and staples.

One can chose to blow off the uncanny similarity between a wire looping through plates and corded plates.

One can choose to blow off the fact that fluted lamellar plates (in which the flutes look like cords in artwork) have been found from Russian to Byzantium to Central Europe.

One can choose to dismiss the preponderance of effigies and artwork that shows mail being worn in greater numbers than scale for Medieval Europe.

One can choose to cite the few lamellar plates found at Visby as being proof for lamellars widespread proof during the Medieval period (even though extant mail is found in far greater quantities)

You can call it a strawman all you want. But wanting something to be true and having concrete evidence for it are two different things.

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Evidence can also be firmly circumstantial without caving to a technological evidential argument.

But if evidence is wanted, I would point to the very same fact your mentioning....that something did happen during the latter empire. And whatever that may be, the point of the matter is that larger "plates" became more and more rare....harder to find...harder to make...harder to repair....etc. Mail which is arguably technically easier to make seems to supersede plates. By the time this happens in Central Europe at the very least, lamellar and scale are almost ancient technologies. The artwork and finds tend to bear this out in the centuries approaching the millennium.

So why is lamellar and scale believed by so many to be a frequently used common Medieval armour? Where is the proof?


And if it was used in these great numbers as some would believe, why wouldnt rings or staples (which are made of wire...just as mail is) be used to connect the plates during the age of wire armour? Given the lack of genuinely medieval lamellar (widespread) I would argue that supporting the organic cord approach is failure to acknowledge the technological status of the day. Its almost an anachronism itself.

And if we look at the actual extant Medieval lamellar plates that have fluting (coming damn close to proving that those flutes have most likely been misinterpreted for organic cords) where would the cords go...over the flutes??? Shocked If so, then the artwork we are seeing in the medieval Byzantine and Russian context would have all tons of lines ...but they dont. The lines we do see in the artwork match the fluted plates we find in the archeological context.

So, did corded lamellar armours exist in Cental Europe during most of the Middle Ages? Sure Im sure some did. But probably not that many when compared to mail.

But those that did exist in that medieval Russian and Byzantine context get corded with organic cords? Very doubtful en mass given the fluted plates we find which are almost certainly being misinterpreted for cords.

Further more its is my understanding that there have been two recent discovered in the Byzantine palace of medieval lamellar plates with rings/staples. I will try to find the citation I found.



Amicably.

[Russ Mitchell]

I'm not going to respond to the "mail was more common" stuff. It's a totally non-issue, upon which nobody disagrees with you.

As I see it, we have solid proof for both stapling and for lacing. The question comes down to: which is more appropriate for a given medieval setting?

1. First argument: Which part of Europe?

The same is true with lamellar and scale. When more and more people try connecting it with rings and staples (if they even understand what that means...rather than be intimidated by the concept and doubt it! ) they will understand the gist of my argument against corded lamellar for western european medieval armour.....which is more of a modern anachronism than any real substantial evidence supports.

Emphasis Mine. You've moved the goalposts here. In doing so, however, I'm inclined to agree, and to agree heartily. Lamellar is excruciatingly rare in Western Europe, and even scale such as (imho) used in the Carolingian brunia is much more likely to involve staples/wire than regular lacing. Now, this does not mean that I'd extend the same up into Northern Europe. Scandinavia is a very different place, and conflating it with places like Gascony would be just as wrong, imho, as saying that Hungary is part of Eastern Europe. Central and Northern Europe doesn't seem to come under any particularly notable Western European influence until well into the High Middle Ages -- in fact, the reverse is universally known to be the case.

2. Byzantine Finds: Dating?

I do understand what you mean by the technological determinist element Russ but in the case of Byzantium we have found """roman""" lamellar and scale armour held together with rings and staples.

Great. From what period, and in what context? Imperial armory? Random find?

3. Art-historical similarity.

One can chose to blow off the uncanny similarity between a wire looping through plates and corded plates.

I have blown this off because it's a non-argument: art-historical sources, precisely because they are indistinguishable, don't tell us anything about that specific question.

4. Does Fluting dictate attachment?

One can choose to blow off the fact that fluted lamellar plates (in which the flutes look like cords in artwork) have been found from Russian to Byzantium to Central Europe.

Similarly, we have caches of plates, some fluted, some not. Do those caches of plates, presumably for repairs and/or later construction of armors, also include caches of wire, for same? If not, then the assumption that the presence of a fluted plate dictates the use of wire staples, is just that, and an excursion into the "either/or" fallacy.

Indeed, given the factual existence of corded lamellar in the Russian context, there is nothing to say that plates which would have been stapled in Byzantium might not have been purchased, transported, and assembled using lacing in Chernigov or Suzdal.

5. Technological and Technological vs. Economic arguments.

[5a]And if it was used in these great numbers as some would believe, why wouldnt rings or staples (which are made of wire...just as mail is) be used to connect the plates during the age of wire armour? [5b]Given the lack of genuinely medieval lamellar (widespread) I would argue that supporting the organic cord approach is failure to acknowledge the technological status of the day. Its almost an anachronism itself.

5a. Wire clearly has two advantages over leather lacing:
1. It is presumably harder to cut through in a fight.
2. The fact that wire staples will hold by themselves means that less wire length would be required than lacing length.

However, lacing also has several advantages over wire:
1. Said wire will have been generally more expensive to produce than cording (particularly for those eras where the creation of mail involves rings made from punched sheet and sheet wire, as opposed to drawn wire).

This is particularly the case for cultures where leather was so readily-available that it was used for armor in multiple layers. (n.b., East-Central Europe, not Western Europe). In said environment, leather lacing is a waste product, universally available, and therefore effectively "free."

2. Said wire is more vulnerable to rust and corrosion, and vastly more vulnerable to the bane of all armored horsemen... horse sweat, than leather cording is.
3. Wire is less efficient to store, and more difficult to mess with in field conditions than lacing -- by definition, any wire sufficiently stiff in order to hold when put into "twist-tie" or staple form, is much less-readily manipulated, particularly without supporting tools, than a purely flexible medium.
4. Lacing will not damage any clothing or equipment which sits underneath it. Ring staples likely would not, either... wire twist-ties would be more likely to do so, and more likely in that process to gall the wearer.

There are circumstances where I am satisfied that the technological argument is the superior one... but those are not universal. Economic arguments regularly trump technological ones. Again, this seems to me to be a case of specific context trumping any claims of universality.

5b is another example of "begging-the-claim," and can thus be discarded. The rarity or lack of rarity of lamellar says nothing about whether said armor was stapled or laced.

6. Begging-the-question.

So, did corded lamellar armours exist in Cental Europe during most of the Middle Ages? Sure Im sure some did. But probably not that many when compared to mail.

This is an assertion, rather than an argument. As it happens, and, as repeatedly stated ad nauseam infinitam, I generally agree with you. Art-historical sources show a MUCH greater use of both scale and lamellar in this region than in Western Europe. However, for indigenous Central European troops (as opposed to the many Eastern-European and middle-eastern troops we know to have been active in the region), mail continues to either predominate, or be used in conjunction with the other two armors.

7. Fluting vs Cording?

7a. And if we look at the actual extant Medieval lamellar plates that have fluting (coming damn close to proving that those flutes have most likely been misinterpreted for organic cords).....

7b. But those that did exist in that medieval Russian and Byzantine context get corded with organic cords? Very doubtful en mass given the fluted plates we find which are almost certainly being misinterpreted for cords.

7a. I don't like the "cording over the plates" interpretation. It is clearly correct (and mystifying except in the argument that these were primarily intended to keep off archery) in the case of some Chinese armors.
That said, I see no reason why the presence of a fluted plate inherently argues for either wire stapling/ties or cording. I believe both to be perfectly applicable, unless your references to Byzantine lamellar are in a period when they are likely to be more relevant than the survivals showing lacing.

Said plates can be assembled using either technique, and one certainly is not forced to lace over the front of a plate merely because it's fluted. This strikes me as a very dodgy argument.

7b. Since we have Russian finds that do indeed demonstrate the factual use of cording, per Norman, this argument is nonsensical. You are arguing that a material find can be discounted on the weight of an assumption.

8. Recent Finds?

Further more its is my understanding that there have been two recent discovered in the Byzantine palace of medieval lamellar plates with rings/staples. I will try to find the citation I found.

Please do. In particular, I'm very curious as to the dating, and whether we're talking about the early, high, or late medieval era.

[Norman]

Moving my answer to Andrew here as well.

There is a Chinese Empirial order from roughly 14th cent mandating leather as cord material for lamellar. Tibetan monasteries have extant full garments of lamellar all leather corded (te oldest suits have been dated to 14th cent)...Some of this lamellar (in the Tibetan monasteries) is virtualy identical to the Viking lamellar finds (I think those are dated well after 7th cent).Many of the lamellar finds in the FSU (Russia and Asia) still retain bits of leather cording - many are 12th - 14th cent...

I was not referring to asian lamellar armour. Mostly central european.

I assume you mean to say Western European. Yes - there seems to have been very little lamellar used in the West after the Roman Empire fell.
But that has nothing to do with your assertions about the nature of "international style" lamellar. And this was certainly being used pretty identicaly from China, through the Silk Road and to Western Russia.

And a lot of asian armour is hide based. The plates that were used were heavily laquered to as to make the holes soft so as to avoid scissoring the cords apart....this is a critical key point.

The Tibetan/Mongol armours are all steel. They were at the Met recently. There are also suits of Mongol armour in the permanent collection of the Royal Armouries in England. The Met has a couple of lamellars but they hide them (though a fella I spoke to told me they were steel with leather cords)
There is also a Siberian suit on display at the Museum of Natural History - again steel with leather cords.

Interesting point to your argument about practical experience - the Siberians were using theirs into the 19th century. The Tibetan monks were not using them for war but had "military" sports events which involved riding and shooting in which these armours were used (again, many of them 600 years old!) up until WWII !!

The Wisby battle finds include a batch of armour where lamellae virtualy identical to Russian finds were reworked into Brigandines. Prior to being reatached, there is no reason to think that the Danes tied them up any different than the Russians did. Presumably they served as lamellar no earler than maybe 100 years before being reworked - maybe 13th cent.

But as you said, this is a batch, hardly representative of the entire continent during the high and latter Middle Ages.

Oh Andrew - don't pick at words to lose the substance! A number of the Brigandines worn at Wisby were old lamellar plates of the same type found in Russia but re-used as backing plates for Brigandines. I would think we have to assume that the dads or grandads of the Wisby fighters had used them as lamellar - or took trophy lamellar from Russian or Turk enemies.

I do not doubt the occasional use of organic cords (which includes leather), but leather does survive more than most people realize and when we tend to find caches we dont tend to find leather amidst these caches. I even suspect some of these numerous small lamellar caches were extra plates, not part of any given assembled suit.

And they just for s#!ts and giggles assembled the plates into rows in a fairly labour intensive leather tying process?
Meanwhile, you haven't refered to any post-Roman stapled lamellar. And, as far as I know the Roman stapled plates were not at all similar to "international style lamellar".

Its even more curious that among these found caches (which people say the leather has rotted away but was there) the number of plates dont equal enough for a full suit anyway! These are faulty conclusions.

I don't know what caches you are talking about, I'm talking about graves, battle sites, and monasteries containing full or almost full suits.

But just liked butted mail was thought by thousands to be real mail....

This is nonsense - only sport-SCA folks who never bothered cracking a book or going to a museum ever thought mail was not ordinarily riveted.

I believe many people are misled into thinking lamellar armour was widely made with organic cords.

Yes - I've been misled by the work of archaeologists, professional reconstructors and historians interpreting art, ...and then there's the Italian spies describing Eastern European armour in detail (Plano carpini and such).

There is far more evidence to support rings and staples than cords, even if its Roman evidence it still goes well up to the 6th century

Again - please refer me one find which is post-Roman (and at all like the Viking / Tibetan / Russian lamellar)!

...and soon after rivetted mail is starting to supersede it.

Here your timing is backwards. The Greeks were using mail at least by 300BCE and the Romans quite fully adopted it.
Romans seem to have used it alongside a variety of plated defenses. The plated defenses seem to me to have developed after mail.
The West Europeans seem to have been using mail possibly before the Roman invasion -- I constantly see its origin refered to as "Celtic" - and continued it as the primary armour (putting aside cloth defenses) until the Crusades.
I believe the earliest lamellar find (of the "international style") is a wee bit later than the earliest mail (like 50 years or so) and it realy takes off in Eastern Europe in the early middle ages (post Roman) though it seems to have got there from Asia where it was clarly primary (ie: the Northern Silk Road).

Aside from Roman armour, what staples/rings are you talking about??
I know of ONE Siberian find (14th cent) - and that one is exciting precisely because it is so rare -- possibly one prototype for what later became Male-n-Plates combination armour

I have several problems with the typical approach to lamellar armour.

You didn't respond.

Third, mail was fairly widely used by the 9th to 10th century and there is little reason to think that lamellar plates that were used, would not have taken advantage of rings and staples.

But the simple fact is that the surviving suits don't show this to be the case!
Perhaps Mail and Lamellar were simply seen as different types of armour with different, often complementary, purposes
(in Eastern Europe and Western Asia, the most complete armour was a maile coat with a lamellar over it).

[Andrew Young]

I think Ive pretty much exhausted most of what I could say with respect to this issue Russ.

To recap the crux of my argument which is less of an argument and more of a polite insistence that many people are not being critical enough with respect to their conclusions about lamellar and scale:


--that while corded lamellar might work well for the weekend warrior, the comparison that "my armour has lasted" is not the same as a genuine forensic test such as a marching or riding hundreds of miles on campaign....much less the stresses of a real battle.


--corded lamellar is "easy" armour in a modern context...easy to cut and drill holes, easy to loop in cord. As such many people have arrived upon anachronistic conclusions that might not be true about original lamellars construction or its true durability any more than saying mild steel armour works against blunt impact rattan weapons, so it must have been what they used right?!?!?.


--we dont have enough caches to prove much at all for most of central europe and eastern europe during the high middle ages. The Visby finds that are constantly cited represent very little if anything, so perhaps they were corded. Yet more importantly a look at contemporary artwork and extant finds shows that even by the late 13th and 14th century warriors were adopting larger plates that eventually became the coat-of-plates. Prior to this mail was the predominant form of armour.


---but when lamellar caches are found, they tend to appear either flat or grouped together like stacked dominoes or like a sliced up loaf of bread. This is VERY interesting because it suggests the stacked lamellar plates were not being used at all. They appear to have been "extras" for repair work. YET the lamellar plates that have been found, while tending to be earlier in period I admit....also tend to be found laying flat, already linked up with rings/or staples.


--citing artwork alone proves nothing when details are ambiguous. And artwork is often the number one citation people use to claim details of internal construction---which amazes me. Claiming that the lines seen in lamellar plates were soft organic cords may be an erroneous conclusion. In the bargrill thread, we have some pretty obvious images of early bargrills...with hinges no less. This kind of detail is hard to dispute. But artwork somehow """proving""" that soft threaded cord is going through the plates-- when rings, staples and flutes look identical and can be drawn identically makes the conclusion that soft organic cords were used en mass during the early middle ages very weak. I further submit to you that when we discuss the high middle ages, mail is more predominant even in Russia and Byzantium. So if we are talking about Russia and Byzanium during the early middle ages, I would say that calling the technological determinist argument an overdrawn conclusion. If somehow we are going to assume that overnight in the year say, 500, that ring/stapled lamellar suddenly disappeared and the Byzantines began using corded lamellar....where is that proof? Particularly when we find fluted plates that look like organic cords....we know that rings and staples appear liked looped through organic cords.....and that the relevant art is notoriously risky (again harkening to the fact that Angels are often drawn with feathers that look suspiciously like lamellar plates!!!)



--regarding Byzantine and Russian finds. I recall these being dated to the 11th and 13th century. I did a search in the Historical Research thread and couldnt find that thread started by Egfroth. Did it get lost with the armour archive reboot that happened a while back???? I still have some of those pictures and citations ....give me a few days to find them. I am transferring over to a new pc at the moment, or more precisely doing some work on adding memory.


cheers
Drew

[Russ Mitchell]

-citing artwork alone proves nothing when details are ambiguous. And artwork is often the number one citation people use to claim details of internal construction---which amazes me. Claiming that the lines seen in lamellar plates were soft organic cords may be an erroneous conclusion. In the bargrill thread, we have some pretty obvious images of early bargrills...with hinges no less. This kind of detail is hard to dispute. But artwork somehow """proving""" that soft threaded cord is going through the plates-- when rings, staples and flutes look identical and can be drawn identically makes the conclusion that soft organic cords were used en mass during the early middle ages very weak. I further submit to you that when we discuss the high middle ages, mail is more predominant even in Russia and Byzantium. So if we are talking about Russia and Byzanium during the early middle ages, I would say that calling the technological determinist argument an overdrawn conclusion. If somehow we are going to assume that overnight in the year say, 500, that ring/stapled lamellar suddenly disappeared and the Byzantines began using corded lamellar....where is that proof? Particularly when we find fluted plates that look like organic cords....we know that rings and staples appear liked looped through organic cords.....and that the relevant art is notoriously risky (again harkening to the fact that Angels are often drawn with feathers that look suspiciously like lamellar plates!!!)

Um, Andrew, are you bothering to read my replies at all, or are you just ranting? At what point have I cited *any* art-historical evidence?

[Andrew Young]

I have never once said corded lamellar didnt exist...we know it did in asia and isolated parts of the world. But this construction tended to work well because the holes edges were softened with laquer and silk cords were frequently used. This does have a bearing on the conversation. Ive seen Medieval Chinese and Japanese laquered lameller and scale plates and the softened edge and silk cord has a huge bearing on avoiding wear and tear, cutting the cords. ....And it appears that a few suits in the Visby finds show evidence of corded construction. This is a pretty rare find however.


Beyond that....if we are talking about most of western and eastern europe, including Russia and Byzantium in both the immediate post Roman era and the middle ages up to the 15th century, and the preponderance of actual extant archeological finds my question to you is:



Where is this proof in western europe, eastern europe, Byzantium and Russia for widespread organic corded lamellar?


Can you show archeological find after find after find that this is the case???


Thats my angle here man....I just dont see enough proof that corded lamellar armour for metal plates in either eastern or western was as widespread as people want it to be. (there is a reason why the romans used rings and staples!....its more durable than corded lamellar/scale!)

You can say I have a pointed argument but have no high medieval or late period proof per se but thats largely because mail replaced lamellar virtually everywhere and mail probably outlasted lamellar beyond the empire!

So if there were a few lamellar or scale suits, I see no reason why some of these at least would not have taken easy advantage of wire rings and staples given that they existed during the age of wire armour (ie, mail). Maybe thats a foredrawn conclusion but its better circumstantial rationale vs. very little in the way of actual proof for organic corded plates in most of europe.



.

[Andrew Young]

I have never once said corded lamellar didnt exist...we know it did in asia and isolated parts of the world. But this construction tended to work well because the holes edges were softened with laquer and silk cords were frequently used. This does have a bearing on the conversation. Ive seen Medieval Chinese and Japanese laquered lameller and scale plates and the softened edge and silk cord has a huge bearing on avoiding wear and tear, cutting the cords. ....And it appears that a few suits in the Visby finds show evidence of corded construction. This is a pretty rare find however.


Beyond that....if we are talking about most of western and eastern europe, including Russia and Byzantium in both the immediate post Roman era and the middle ages up to the 15th century, and the preponderance of actual extant archeological finds my question to you is:



Where is this proof in western europe, eastern europe, Byzantium and Russia for widespread organic corded lamellar?


Can you show archeological find after find after find that this is the case???


Thats my angle here man....I just dont see enough proof that corded lamellar armour for metal plates in either eastern or western was as widespread as people want it to be. (there is a reason why the romans used rings and staples!....its more durable than corded lamellar/scale!)

You can say I have a pointed argument but have no high medieval or late period proof per se but thats largely because mail replaced lamellar virtually everywhere and mail probably outlasted lamellar beyond the empire!

So if there were a few lamellar or scale suits, I see no reason why some of these at least would not have taken easy advantage of wire rings and staples given that they existed during the age of wire armour (ie, mail). Maybe thats a foredrawn conclusion but its better circumstantial rationale vs. very little in the way of actual proof for organic corded plates in most of europe.



.

[Russ Mitchell]

Hrm...

I'm not familiar with metal hole plates being softened with lacquer: this makes no sense to me, particularly given how hard lacquer can dry.

I also don't have the bevy of archaeological information Norman does -- the Hungarian historiography wasn't allowed access to Ukraine, as Soviet archaeology officially declared that whatever was in currently Russian territories was, ipso facto, primordially Russian. Therefore, the historiography with which I work is oddly behind and playing catch-up.

(Also, the armory is off limits to outsiders: we may HAVE lamellar finds, and not have them published... I know from second-hand sources that what's actually in the Armory makes the Wallace Collection look chintzy by comparison.)

If the Byzzies are using rings from the 10-13th century, that is an important piece of information, and we need access to it. If that holds

Otherwise, you seem to be laboring under a common but serious misconception -- that Asia and the so-called "isolated" parts of the world have nothing to do with Europe. This is very much not the case. Cumans based in Asia transit via the Siberian zone, the Rus Principalities, the Carpathians, the Balkans, and are then employed in the Asian portion of the Byzantine Empire. Oghuz, Seljuk, Pecheneg, Cuman, and Alanian soldiers are commonly seen throughout the region. The Volga Bulgars may be unheard-of in Brittany, but they're a major power in Eastern Europe's version of the High Middle Ages. (Serious enough to kick Subedei's ass the first time they lock horns.)

The steppe zone in which "international" lamellar is used runs straight to the Carpathians. As Norman has pointed out, Carpini is generally regarded as a pretty reliable source.

(BTW: not arguing Western Europe, and if you would bother to actually read my replies, you'd know that. )

The problems, communications aside, is that we're awash in a sea of assertions. If you are only going to allow archaeological evidence, then put yours on the table. Cite, location, period. We'll ask Norm to do the same, and I'll dig through what I've got this evening -- what I have doesn't show rings at all, but doesn't specify lacing, either.

[Norman]

a polite insistence that many people are not being critical enough with respect to their conclusions about lamellar and scale

Most people are not critical enough about most things.

while corded lamellar might work well for the weekend warrior, the comparison that "my armour has lasted" is not the same as a genuine forensic test such as a marching or riding hundreds of miles on campaign....much less the stresses of a real battle.

This has been proposed as why lamellar was mostly displaced by maile-n-plates by the 15th-16th century
...although it did continue in some places.

--citing artwork alone proves nothing when details are ambiguous. And artwork is often the number one citation people use to claim details of internal construction---which amazes me. Claiming that the lines seen in lamellar plates were soft organic cords may be an erroneous conclusion.

I think you are misunderstanding the use of artwork as evidence in the case of lamellar. It goes something like this:
1) We have a number of armours which still exist (the Tibetan monastery armours were well known even in the 30ies and the various finds since then from China and through the length of the Silk Road into Western Russia have strengthened the knowledge)
2) The armour in the art looks just like what we have (The Roman stapled plates make a very different configuration from the Mongolian corded plates - the art I am aware of tends to match the Mongolian configuration).
3) QED - it was most likely done the same way.
The fact that lamellar plates from 8th cent. BIrka (I think it was Birka) are identical to plates on 14th cent. Mongolian armour makes the assumptions about lacing all the stronger.

[raito]

Hrm...

I'm not familiar with metal hole plates being softened with lacquer: this makes no sense to me, particularly given how hard lacquer can dry.

I belive that he means that it rounds (softens) the sharp edge of a punched hole, making it less likely to cut cords. And I agree with the statement on that basis.

[Russ Mitchell]

Yes, but he was referring to hide armor, not metal armors.

[Sextus Maximus]

I would like to say this has been a fascinating thread to read since I am a huge fan of lamellar/scale armors of all types and eras. I just finished my Roman Scale shirt and I was going to staple the scales together like they were done and proven with remnants of scales found at Roman sites. I made this shirt for SCA and I was very concerned with weight and getting poked or having a staple driven into me when being hit. I decided to lace the scales. There has been some draw backs both good and bad in my making the shirt this way. The lacing allows a lot of flexibility vertically which is nice for movement but it is very precarious in keeping the rows of scales secured on the linen backing. The scales shift easier than they should and I can see why staples were used to keep them more rigid and in place. I can also see that if they were laced that a sharp weapon would be able to cut the scales and remove them the shirt very quickly. Since I do not have that issue what I do I was not concerned about that. Making this shirt has been truly a eye opening experience even though I used some modern materials and tools for the most part. I need to get some pics soon and I have one more piece to finish which is the back plate of the shirt.

Aedinius

[Russ Mitchell]

Definitely. If it's THAT fragile-feeling, you might be doing something odd in the construction.

Most of my reading suggests that amongst Turkic folks, those who didn't lace, instead used rivets, probably similarly to how the Khazars did.

[Sextus Maximus]

Oh its not fragile at all, the scales just shift side to side a bit more because of the lacing instead of the ridged staples that were used in which that would not happen at all.

Aedinius

[Jess]

Andrew Young,

It has been 20 days since I paypaled you money for the bar grill.
Has it shipped yet and via what service?
If there is a problem please advise. I still hope for a friendly resolution. Thanks!

Jess McCarthy
5959 River Walk Cir.
Newburgh, IN 47630