Byzantine Lamellar/Klibanion assembly?

[btswanfury]

Hi all,

Hoping someone on the list can lend me a hand.

Does anyone know how Byzantine lamellar is assembled? I mean the kind often seen in depictions of warrior saints and the like, specifically this:

It seems to me that the lames are individually laced to strips of leather, and then the strips are riveted together, with the top hole of the lower lame being riveted through the bottom hole of the upper lame. Thoughts? Anyone have any experience with this? Thanks!

[Dan Howard]

That is Dawson's idea. There isn't much evidence behind it except that it looks like some of the illustrations. The lack of horizontal overlap in the construction and the unnecessary inclusion of rivets are particularly troubling. Personally I think that Beatson's idea has more merit. He actually used lames that were found in the area and date to the right time period.
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~chrisand ... ellar.html

[Galileo]

Dawson's books indicate the plates are riveted to the leather strips, and those are laced together.

He's got an online publication here that gives some ideas. http://www.levantia.com.au/military/Daw ... isited.pdf


G--

[Dan Howard]

I never undertstood the rivets. All he is trying to do is make it look like the illustrations. So why not emboss a dome in each scale like we have in plenty of extant examples. It gives the same appearance and has the benefit of historical precedent.

[Tascius]

This style looks closer to the truth to me.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid ... =1&theater

[John S.]

For more on Dr. Dawson's Interpretation google his Levantia webpage, use the search function for old posts by Egfroth, and consider ILLing Dr. Dawson's book (mentioned on the Levantia site.)

No one's going to be able to say for sure who's interpretation of the art and finds of stray plates is correct until an intact klivanion is found. Regardless of which construction method you choose, look at Dr. Dawson's material since he identifies trends in how appearance in artwork changes over time.

I've been working on one using Dr. Dawson's interpretation. My difficulty has been tailoring the resulting rectangle to fit me. The easy work around of lacing rows loose doesn't work when you're attaching plates to a leather strip.

[Dan Howard]

Dawson's books indicate the plates are riveted to the leather strips, and those are laced together.

He's got an online publication here that gives some ideas. http://www.levantia.com.au/military/Daw ... isited.pdf

I've never read this before. It has a lot of similarities to Samuel Rush Meyrick's work in the 19th century. Dawson is doing to lamellar what Meyrick did to mail. Just like Meyrick, Dawson seems to be taking a very "literal" interpretation of the Byzantine illustrations and inventing a lot of armour typologies when it is far more likely that we are simply looking at stylistic artistic variances. D'Amato does the same thing for Roman armour.

[RandallMoffett]

I guess the artistic rendition is up to interpretation but what would the pros and cons of such a set up be?

RPM

[Galileo]

Riveting the plates top to the bottom of the next row would remove a whole lot of flexibility, I would think. You're basically making a solid breastplate one itty bitty plate at a time.

Without making one that way and handling it - it would be hard to give a good opinion.

The riveting a row to a leather backing, then lacing together would appear to give vertical flexibility but adds weight (of the leather).

[George fH]

I made mine using Dawsons theory and it has worked so far. Riveting the plates to the leather was the way I did it. Each plate to the leatherbacking , and after I had all the "bands" I mounted it offset as you see in many sources. My pattern for the plates and the designing/placing of the holes was essential to make it work.
I really like the idea of the domed plates, and I think I will try that when I make my next one.

Conclusions from building this to do SCA style combat is that the lacing is need to be firm to secure the bands.
The leather do add some weight in comparison to my two other lamellarkits I have.
Next time I will do it in proper material- not 4140 -T6 Aluminium- this to make it look right, and feel right.

For my project look at my blog
georgefitzhume.wordpress.com

[Dan Howard]

The third lame is what I'm talking about. It has an embossed dome, dates to the right period, and was found at Doneshkoe gorodishe, Russia. There are plenty of other examples. No lamellar construction requires a rivet if it is laced properly.

[Tascius]

I made one based off of plate 1 above. The nice advantages to the dome in the plate are
A- the dome makes for a stronger plate
B- the dome protects the lacing from being cut/abraded.

[schreiber]

Just like Meyrick, Dawson seems to be taking a very "literal" interpretation of the Byzantine illustrations and inventing a lot of armour typologies when it is far more likely that we are simply looking at stylistic artistic variances. D'Amato does the same thing for Roman armour.

What I want to know is, if we're looking at literally interpreting iconography, how come the reconstructions never taper at the midsection?
This site in particular mentions a Constantinople dig that unearthed plates of varying dimensions.
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~chrisand ... ellar.html
I'm looking through the finds linked here,
https://sites.google.com/site/archoevid ... lar-armour
and also seeing lots of evidence of a good bit of size variation within one armor.

So not only is it illustrated as fitting to the wearer's body, but there's also archaeological evidence for it.

[John S.]

For SCA combat--I was satisfied with the level of protection using loosely hanging rows. There are precedents for the hanging rows from other cultures. For instance, the Tibetan lamellar referenced in one of the links Schreiber cites.

Do we have any examples of plates with metallic residue in the holes from decayed rivets? Do stray plates represent a large enough sample set to serve as our primary source of info?

Schreiber has a good point. Regardless of which lacing pattern folks choose, almost no one bothers making their reconstruction fit closely to the body like illustrated in iconography. Historians (professional or amateur) proposing reconstructions probably skip over that as a "detail." SCA fighters tend to use commercially available lamellar which is mass-produced constant-size rectangles.

Any lacing pattern could be made to fit closely by using different sized plates on different portions of the wearer's body.

Do we have any finds of wedge shaped or tapered plates in this context or just different sized rectangular plates? Adding a slight taper to each plate (a la Japanese lamellar) was one of the other suggested ways of making my reconstruction fit last time I was vent-ing about my project.

[schreiber]

I actually inadvertently did it with leather once. I water hardened them so there were size differences quite by accident.
So I sorted them by relative size, and used the biggest ones from the neck down to the sternum, then progressively smaller ones in two or three rows along the ribs, and then progressively larger from the bottom of the rib cage to the waist.
The cut size of the leather was 1.5x4", and I think the smallest lame I used was maybe 1 1/8" x 3.5". I think I had sorted out two other distinct sizes between the biggest and smallest, so four total.
Just that much size difference made a good bit of tailoring possible. I didn't get into changing geometry at all.

[John S.]

Yeah, I shrunk everything down to waste size on mine and cut down the center of each armpit. That gives an empty triangle under each armpit and I'm trying (unsuccessfully so far) to lace some rows in caddy-corner. Even if that works, it'll still give a point forward and back from each armpit. I'm still deciding whether that matters.

I have to shrink mine from 48 inches (~39 plates) to 38 inches (~31 plates) in 4 rows. So, basically it has to lose one plate per row under each armpit until it reaches the bottom of my ribcage and then it can be shaped like a tube. All plates are currently 1.25." If I changed the plate size used in each row by 2.5"/N plates per row, that would do the trick. Making the plates into trapezoids with the top 2.5"/N smaller than the bottom would accomplish the same thing.

2.5"/39 plates ~.064"/plate ~ 1/16" per plate

2.5"/31 plates ~.081"/plate ~ 1/12" per plate

These two measurements may be small enough to be equivalent.

So like you suggest, a very small difference between plate sizes or a small difference between top and bottom width of the plates would do it.

[btswanfury]

Thanks so much for the help, guys! I appreciate it greatly!