The Armour Archive

Anyone else catch these shows last night? There were three episodes one. The first was about the Royal British Navy in the 1700's, I think. Didn't watch that one. The second was about Saladin's assault on the Knights Templar garrison at Jacob's Ford in 1178. The Third was the battle at Kamikura, Japan in 1336. I liked these two, as they presented interesting wound pathology and examinations of the skeletal remains form each location.





Edited for early-morning-spelling

I watched all three of the episodes. I found the Royal Navy one to be more diverse in coverage of information regarding the injuries.

There was some interesting information in the other two about how the weapons caused the injuries shown in the skeletal remains.

I have issues with them claiming the "archers" teeth were worn down by him using them to strip the bark off arrows...

EnglishSteel wrote:I have issues with them claiming the "archers" teeth were worn down by him using them to strip the bark off arrows...

LOL! Some stuff that comes from those shows is pretty good. We were watching one on the German tribes and they said that the Germans were screwed because after they threw their spears they had nothing to fight with but bare hands.

I watched it last night and found it quite interesting. I can't imagine the pain the poor top-man was in before he died. Sheesh! Watching the Crusader one caused me to have a number of questions. Would a sword really penetrate that deeply into the shoulder through riveted maille and an aketon? Having the left arm cleaved clean off on the other one implied to me that he wasn't wearing any armor. On the other hand, the poor guy who had bits of his skull chipped away...that's gotta suck!!

Overall I thought it wasn't bad.

There is some literary evidence (whatever good that may be) of spears and polearms penetrating maille in the Icelandic sagas. http://www.hurstwic.org/history/article ... g_mail.htm
Look towards the second half of the article for details.

I think some of the visuals and descriptions were, well...exagerated. But the evidence on the physical remains is intruiging. I could see a heavy blade bashing throgh a single layer of mail, and biting into the shoulder.

I saw the Saladin one. Very interesting. DIdn't get to see the samurai one, had to turn in early for work.

Vilhelm550 wrote:I think some of the visuals and descriptions were, well...exagerated. But the evidence on the physical remains is intruiging. I could see a heavy blade bashing throgh a single layer of mail, and biting into the shoulder.

Visuals like the samurai fighting by flying though the air with thier swords over thier heads and screaming at the topof thier lungs?

Gilebert wrote:I watched all three of the episodes. I found the Royal Navy one to be more diverse in coverage of information regarding the injuries.

There was some interesting information in the other two about how the weapons caused the injuries shown in the skeletal remains.

Out here in the sticks we don't get NatGeo, so if it gets rerun, please DVR it for me

EnglishSteel wrote:I have issues with them claiming the "archers" teeth were worn down by him using them to strip the bark off arrows...

When they said "scimitar" and brought out that thing, I nearly rolled my eyes up into my head. At that time, BOTH sides were using straight swords.