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+--- Thread: Arbeia mail shirt (/showthread.php?tid=17412)
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Arbeia mail shirt - D B Campbell - 08-27-2010
Quote:Slightly off topic (and I will do a search on here) has the South Shields (Arbeia) mail shirt been discussed anywhere - found in 1997 and in pride of place in the museum?Noticed in Britannia 29 (1998) p. 385 ("Roman Britain in 1997") with Plate XXXII.A, it seems to have been discussed in Arbeia Journal 6/7 (2001) pp. 55-60 -- I haven't seen this report (but would love to, if any kind person can oblige). :wink:
Arbeia mail shirt - Vindex - 08-27-2010
Quote:Vindex:h6gche6c Wrote:Slightly off topic (and I will do a search on here) has the South Shields (Arbeia) mail shirt been discussed anywhere - found in 1997 and in pride of place in the museum?Noticed in Britannia 29 (1998) p. 385 ("Roman Britain in 1997") with Plate XXXII.A, it seems to have been discussed in Arbeia Journal 6/7 (2001) pp. 55-60 -- I haven't seen this report (but would love to, if any kind person can oblige). :wink:
Sent you PM!
Arbeia mail shirt - D B Campbell - 08-27-2010
Quote:Sent you PM!Now I wonder what that could be about! :wink:
Re: Arbeia mail shirt - Vindex - 08-27-2010
There's a domed perspex lid over the shirt which is jolly annoying but here are some piccies:
Top one shows what I think is the neck - if you look carefully you can see a square section with a 'V' in the front (NOT supported by the report!), then a close up of the mail (riveted) and then the whole shirt. It was found between two layers of burnt daub which is why it is preserved (this hasn't been post ex cleaned as it didn't need it) and appears to have fallen to the floor during the fire in the barrack block and landed in a heap. I think you can see the neck in the middle and the outer edges are the sleeves such as they were. This is all of it and from the report weighed in at 5.44Kg.
Re: Arbeia mail shirt - D B Campbell - 08-27-2010
Thanks for creating the new thread, whoever you are. Nice editing job! :wink:
Re: Arbeia mail shirt - Vindex - 08-27-2010
Quote:Thanks for creating the new thread, whoever you are. Nice editing job! :wink:
LOL! I thought you did it!!
Re: Arbeia mail shirt - Robert Vermaat - 08-27-2010
My pleasure. :wink:
Re: Arbeia mail shirt - Crispvs - 08-28-2010
What really fascinated me when I first saw it twelve years ago was that it was so well preserved that you could easily see tiny holes where rivets had been lost from some of the rings in antiquity. I had never hoped in my wildest dreams to see a mail shirt so well preserved. Plenty of surviving mail shirts from the centuries following the migration period look like little more than rather worn bricks which have to be closely examined in order to see the remains of the rings themselves. The state of preservation of the Arbeia shirt is truly remarkable.
Crispvs
Re: Arbeia mail shirt - Vindex - 08-28-2010
I agree Crispvs - it is an impressive piece of craftsmanship.
One can only imagine that the off duty soldier who lost it in the fire was heartbroken! It was found in one of the ordinary barrack rooms, by the way, not the officer's quarters, although there is a theory that the room could possibly have been a workshop (two hearths instead of one) and the shirt was in for repair, or just finished.
Re: Arbeia mail shirt - Ron Andrea - 08-28-2010
Laudes for everyone! Great pictures despite the conditions.
And thank you for mentioning the weight.
Re: Arbeia mail shirt - PhilusEstilius - 08-28-2010
I was very lucky to have a good look at this chain mail when I managed to get the museum to remove the cover for my friend Erik Schmid to do some photography of it for his studies, in fact I got most of the other museums in the area and Scotland to help by giving access to their pieces also.
Re: Arbeia mail shirt - Thunder - 08-29-2010
What fascinating material. It's composition and fineness certainly puts paid to the many (highly annoying) arguments I've had to face over Roman and Antiquity mail being somehow different in it's protective qualities compared to Medieval mail.
Re: Arbeia mail shirt - arklore70 - 09-08-2010
An absolute gem of a find.
Do we know roughly what the ring diameter and thickness of the rings were?
I am curious if we might know the length of the shirt and the length of the sleeves.
5.44 kg is roughly 12 pounds. Now while that might not be interesting in itself, what I find very interesting is that the two 6mm Roman pattern maille shirts that I own each come out weighing 12 pounds.
By what I can tell, it appears that the shirt is a bit later in that it does not appear to have a doubler. Do we know/or have a suspected date of when the find took place?
This shirt would make in amazing article in AW.
Thanks for posting this.
R/
Re: Arbeia mail shirt - Crispvs - 09-08-2010
I believe that the shirt was found in the burnt remains of a third century barrack block some time in 1997. At the time I recall that members of Cohors Quinta Gallorum did some tests dropping their own mail shirts and found that the overall mass of the mail was similar to that of theirs and that theirs sometimes landed in similar shaped heaps to the excavated example. I somehow doubt that we will ever know the original shape of the piece.
Mike Bishop will probably know more, or alternatively you could contact Alex Croom at Arbeia, who is bound to know a good deal about it. Tony Drake (Brennius on RAT) also lives and works up there so he may know more as well.
Crispvs
Re: Arbeia mail shirt - Gaius Julius Caesar - 09-08-2010
I have a couple of piles on my floor that look very similar.
I had the same problem when I tried to get photos of this, compounded by the auto-focus on the camera picking the perspex as its subject of choice. :x Couldn't get the manual focus to co-operate either, so good pictures!