RandallMoffett wrote:Charles,
The best I can think of is his book simply titled, Sutton Hoo. He literally wrote the book on it, or one of them.
Who’s “his”? Best book for what? I think I know what you are getting at, (Prof. Carver? Referencing the Swedish migration to England?) but I just want to make sure I understand.
RandallMoffett wrote:The problem with your comparisons with the Sutton Hoo is that you need to do the same critical review on roman and Persian helmets with it. Some of which, aside from the solid skull which is unique basically, Are nearly identical in neck guard, check pieces and even face plates. These are not minor. Some Roman ridge helmets have basically the same parts in this respect. And the fact the creator of the helmet added a ridge likely for pure amusement and decoration should not be wasted.
As I said before though. I tend to think of it as a mix between styles not one style which to me indicates the mixing of various cultures in England but perhaps evidence may come forward showing otherwise someday but the Swedish connection still is not strong enough with the indirect evidence you have provided to make that case.
Well, I have – I’m fairly well informed about the Roman material. You do understand that the Vendel, etc. material has precisely the same ancestry, yes? I'm pretty sure you do, but that is not clear from what you have just written. Where do you think the aventails on Valsgarde 6-8 come from? Clearly inspired by the Persian material. The crests that are found on pretty much all of the extant examples (except Vendel XIV)? Clearly comes from the Ridge helmets – this is no different from Sutton Hoo. And the Vendel XIV helmet is “nearly identical” to certain later Roman types, particularly the cheek guards – and I’d argue that the hinged back strips are simply a cheaper analog to the single plate of the Sutton Hoo helm. These details are not minor, either.
And while I have no huge objection to the concept of style mixing (indeed, it seems quite plausible, even if the evidence isn’t really overwhelming) this opens a can of worms. England was not the only place that had a “mixing of various cultures” – the same could be argued for the Continent as well. And given that there was travel and trade, one could even make a case for Sweden having a “mix” of cultures. Indeed, the sheer variety of features on the Swedish material makes a good case for that.
Also, it is worth noting that the last Ridge Helmets would have been seen in England roughly two *centuries* before the Sutton Hoo helm was buried. While there is an obvious ancestry in evidence, I’m not sure how much should be made about the link between Ridged helmets and Sutton Hoo in particular. I do concede, though, that England remained Roman for a long time, so there is some merit to the idea of a closer connection between the two, especially with regards to the cheekplates/ear flaps. However, I find the face plate connection to be more sketchy – though functionally the same it does not very closely resemble the Roman Cavalry helms with their raised and more naturalistic face guards, as opposed to the relatively flat and stylized version on the Sutton Hoo helm.
I do not, however, understand how you regard the obvious commonalities between the extant Swedish material and Sutton Hoo count as weak “indirect” evidence. Put another way, what is there about the Sutton Hoo helm that makes it explicitly Anglo Saxon? To date no one has presented a single piece of evidence that proves that. Doesn’t mean its not there, just that the case has not been made yet. As noted, the most likely very Anglo Saxon Coppergate and Pioneer examples do not resemble Sutton Hoo at all, save in having common ancestry.
For the record, Bruce-Mitford in “Aspects of Anglo Saxon Archaeology” states his belief that the Sutton Hoo helm was either made in Sweden or at least by freshly arrived Swedish immigrants, though this was published in 1974 so he may well have changed his mind since then, or had his views superseded by more recent work.
As I’ve said before my main objection to the notion that the Sutton Hoo helmet is locally made is really more about the cavalier and superficial way the theory is presented. Basically Evans, et al say words to the effect that, “Well, it looks like the Swedish material but it has a few differences so it must be Anglo Saxon.” Really, if you boil it down, that’s all you get. But, as I’ve pointed out, most of those observations are really quite trite. Not necessarily wrong to point out, but I can easily point to reasonable analogs to the Swedish material. Bluntly, there are a lot more commonalities with the Swedish material than the Anglo Saxon.
Here are some arguments in favour of Swedish manufacture: at least one of the pressblech on Sutton Hoo was reconstructed based on study of the Valsgärde 7 helmet. The mere *presence* of pressblech is pretty much a Swedish thing (yes, other types of overlay are known from Late Roman contexts, and the Staffordshire hoard indicates some kind of overlay, but the pressblech seem to be unique to Sweden – certainly I don’t think any dies have ever been found outside of the region)
Some arguments I would raise favouring local manufacture: the close similarity of the man between two beasts (bears?) motif between the Sutton Hoo purse lid and one of the Torslunda dies. Note that the Sutton Hoo lid is most certainly of Insular manufacture, while the Torslunda dies are clearly “Swedish” (really “Ölandish”) – though the final answer really depends on which influenced the other. The “double dragon” arrangement on the front terminal part of the crest has no direct correlation to currently known Swedish material. While I am not sure that it can be attributed to Anglo Saxon culture that is nevertheless where I would look first for relevant parallels, given the find location.
RandallMoffett wrote:
This is only fair if people trying to get practical understanding go and get MAs and PhDs. [N.B. in response to my proposal about those studying advanced degrees in Archaeology and similar to study a period craft, etc.]
I agree academia would benefit but as a person with feet in both world I can say I have had more palm slapping the forehead moments with non-academic 'specialists' who think they know because they have handled an object but lack the familiarity with the larger corpus of evidence. This drives me crazy. Yes you read a handful of sources on a topic. That is great. The person who wrote that book likely went through scores or hundreds of them original and contemporary to do so. Are they perfect no but there usually is great work going into their concepts and theories which too often are cast aside by armchair historians for basically gut feelings and a few bits of evidence, hope they did not have chili or something for dinner....
Strongly disagree.
For starters, for all the “palm slapping the forehead moments” you have had it fails to match the problems caused by academia mistakes. Let me point out a few particularly relevant ones:
1) The Sutton Hoo hauberk – early on when the find was first published they gave this a cursory glance and concluded it was of butted construction, and then published this. Of course, it is alternated riveted and solid like every other sample of mail that has ever been found from the Roman Iron Age to about 1300 A.D. or so… The problem is that this error has poisoned quite a few publications and discussions ever since (including Claude Blair’s otherwise excellent work “European Armour”), in spite of having been corrected by Bruce-Mitford in the volume I mentioned previous. A good, thorough correction but some 30 years or so too late, unfortunately.
2) Kelly de Vries Medieval Military Technology – I don’t know what to say here. On the one hand it seems a useful work, and at a cursory glance seems competent, but the devil’s in the details. I had issues with the 1st Edition, so much so that I stopped reading it due to the detail inaccuracies I was seeing. I got the second edition, hoping that some of these detail problems would be fixed. Alas, no. Imagine my shock when I read this: “…
the lorica hamata, was constructed of metal rings. These rings were made in two different ways: punched out of sheet metal, so-called solid rings, and from wire, with the ends butted together. This armor was made from wire with the ends butted together, the wire rings used to secure the solid rings, in an interlocking pattern of rows in which each ring was jointed to four others….” Butted, really? I suppose I should be delighted that he got the punched solid ring part correct, but I imagine Erik Schmid or Dan Howard would have an earful or two to say on this alone. But it gets better. Prof. de Vries actually has a foot note that cites Robinson’s “Arms & Armour of Imperial Roman” which, on page 164, states the following with regards to the construction of Roman mail: “
The oldest method of construction, and also the quickest, is where every alternate row of rings is punched out of sheet metal and the rows connecting them are made from wire, with their ends flattened, overlapped, punched and riveted.” (emphasis added) Now, correct me if I am wrong, uneducated rube that I am, but if you cite a particular passage to support a particular claim, then is it not logical to conclude that YOUR CLAIM SHOULD NOT CONTRADICT THAT CITATION?!? (BTW this is not the only detail I had a problem with, but certainly it was the most egregious I’ve noted thus far – however, in the same chapter/section he also makes the absurd claim that lorica segmentata were made of “…
six or seven horizontal strips of bronze riveted to leather straps to hold them in place,… this is mostly wrong, BTW – he even gets the date of use wrong as well. I refer interested folks to various books on Roman armour and specialized volumes on the lorica segmentata). What sort of “scholarship” is this?
From my perspective, I have a lot of books, original journal articles, etc. on the subject, so I know full well how spectacularly flat wrong his claims are. It beggars belief that an “expert” on this subject could make such obvious mistakes.
So, tell me, why should I trust academics when they can’t get the most basic facts right? I’m not expecting perfection here but COME THE FRAK ON! It’s not rocket surgery folks! It is simply not hard to find sources that flat disprove de Vries assertions. And he is regarded as an authority?!? How in Hades does that happen?
3) Arwidsson’s ridiculous reconstruction of the Valsgärde 8 body armour, with its “barrel stave” construction, rounds out this short list. Now, in her defense, there was a basis for this, specifically artwork depictions of Persian armour of a vaguely similar nature, though she failed to note some important detail differences. Here is where knowing some technical details of WMA and body armour would have made a difference: even a very simple reconstruction out of thin sheet metal or even stiff cardboard would have demonstrated the obvious problems with her approach (as was shown by Gamber Ortwin in his article), and pointed her in a better direction.
Now, the point is not to slam academia, per se. After all, where would we be without their expertise in recovering and preserving artifacts, and on occasion at least writing about them a bit? Rather, I bring all this up to point out a more subtle problem. While an amateur crackpot may indeed come up with some “palm slapping the forehead” ideas, such rarely get very far. But when academians make an inevitable mistake, their errors linger for years, even decades, doing considerably more damage. It has taken myriad years to get past the belief that the Sutton Hoo maille was butted, for example, with all the attendant problems that has caused convincing folks that riveted (or riveted/solid) ring construction was the norm (I had one fellow tell me that riveted mail was only for the wealthy and that “poorer” soldiers used butted…). And de Vries moment of stupendous illiteracy hardly helps… Further, Arwidsson’s error persisted for quite some time in photos and art depicting the Valsgärde 8 armour. It does not help that some in academia can be quite arrogant. I recall someone either here or on myArmoury seeking other PhD’s to refute some idiot of a Medieval History professor who claimed that swords weigh “25 lbs” and other absurdities, but who refused to accept any correction from anyone who did not have a magical PhD appended to their name. Of course, a simple glance at the Wallace Museum Catalogues would have proven this fool wrong. Never mind that a 25 lb. sword requires a profound ignorance of basic physics to take seriously….
RandallMoffett wrote:
An FYI Martin Carver is very much into experimental archeology so try not to assume that is always true. He has done some pretty remarkable things in the name of history. Things I suspect many re-enactors would even find borderline crazy.
That’s excellent, but Prof. Carver represents what percent of pertinent academia in this area? Unfortunately, I expect it is a rather small number… Apart from Carver, Dr. Tobias Capwell, and yourself, I really can’t think of too many folks in academia that are involved in experimental archaeology. It is gratifying to know that there are exceptions, but they are just that: exceptions.
