Roman helmets: Imperial Gallic/Italic and Ridge - comparisons and sources

[CaesarAugustus]

Solid bowl helmets... also require substantial more work and skill to create and they are much harder to repair... Enforcing standards and having strict quality control will result in a better multi-piece helmet than a single-bowl helmet that was made without those procedures in place.

That sounds about right.

Going back to Michael's 'Rolls Royce v. Ford' analogy, which is along the same lines, we might compare the old gallic/italic and the new ridge models in the same way:

Principiate: individually hand-made helmets, quality varies considerably, some parts (ie hinges) fiddly and easily broken, and hard to repair or replace. Bowl rather weak and requires cross bracing.

Dominate: factory-produced helmets. Production faster and more frequent. 'Fiddly bits' replaced by simpler straps and buckles. Some models have better facial protection (nasals) and larger cheek pieces. Two-part bowl possibly thicker metal, ridge possibly creates a weak point, but the amount of force needed to break the helmet would probably be fatal to the wearer anyway!

Result: some principiate helmets may have been of better quality overall than dominate models, but many were not. Most ridge helmets, on the other hand, were entirely effective and did what they needed to do, besides being available in far greater numbers. This is why they came to dominate later arms production for c.150 years.

Again, no, non and no. I understand that your points are in crisis, but you have to read

The point is not just the breakage, here what you have to think about:
As a matter of fact, the helmet purpose is understood as head protection, against penetration and shock/brain injuries. Thus, the purpose of protective helmets is to prevent head injury by decreasing the amount of impact energy that reaches the head, reducing the severity or probability of injury. So, the quality of the helmet is given by the ability to reduce the severity or probability of injury.

Besides resistance to penetration, the helmet is the initial shock absorber. We can highlight as follow the helmet responsabilities:
- spreading the impact load over a large area of the helmet, therefore reducing the concentrated stresses during an impact that
reaches the head and increasing the amount of energy absorbed, by having a larger area of effective energy absorbing liner;

- prevent helmet penetration by pointed or a sharp object that might otherwise puncture/penetrate the skull;

- absorbing the initial shock in an impact.

As a matter of fact, smaller plates implies less energy dispersion capacity, so the probability of injuring increases. Material science.

And as we can read in the paper, it is exactly the opposite of what you have written:
Klumbach, who follows Alfôldi in attributing the dissemination of ridge helmets personally to Constantine, sees the employment of Persian-style helmets as part of the orientalisation of court ceremonial and the dress of emperors, officials and state servants, from the time of the Tetrarchy. No doubt this is part of the explanation; one has only to look at Berkasovo I to believe it. However, it seems to me that it is not the barbaric splendour of some of the helmets that is of deepest significance, but the simplicity of design which is common to all, resulting from the elimination of all components requiring high levels of skill to manufacture. Complex forgings such as hinges and one-piece bowls with integral neck guards were excised from the new designs. The simple components of the ridge helmets could be made by relatively unskilled and inexperienced smiths. The downright crudeness of a number of examples suggests that they often were. Even the finest pieces hardly match up to second century standards of construction.
Not only, then, was there a complete change in the design of Roman helmets. There was a simultaneous decline in standards of manufacture. These changes must be seen against the historical background of contemporary developments in the army and the armaments industry itself.
Little is known for certain about the organisation of the industry which produced the fine helmets of the second and early third centuries AD. It is assumed that individual craftsmen or small private companies supplied the troops, probably through a variety of mechanisms including commissions from individual soldiers and larger multiple orders from regiments, provincial army commands or the central
government. Whatever the case, presumably these were cash transactions. Armourers will have been paid in specie for their work, and used the coin to cover raw materials and overheads, pay their taxes and support their families. They were particulary dependant on the soundness of the currency as laws controlling sales and possession of armaments restricted their market almost exclusively to the state. The collapse of the coinage from the middle of the third century would have paralysed this system of supply. The army could not afford to buy the weapons, while the armourers could not sell their wares nor buy raw materials. The operating system of the industry, which had endured for several centuries, collapsed.
The development of a crisis in arms procurement is, in my opinion, the direct cause of the establishment of the state arms factories, or fabricae, which start to appear under the Tetrarchy. It is suggested that from the 260s the state was forced to bypass the
financial crisis and started to maintain the armourers directly, by providing rations and security in return for product, leading to the gradual absorption of the armourers into the Imperial service. This process reached its logical conclusion when Diocletian put it on a regular basis and built new factories to accommodate (and control) them at strategic points across the Empire. It seems that the state wanted quantity production, not fancy quality, hardly surprising when faced with the task of supplying an expanding army suffering high rates of attrition, as Diocletian's surely was. The armourers, now called fabricenses, probably had monthly quotas to fulfill. Against this background, the history of helmet design becomes explicable. Traditional Roman types ceased to be made with the hypothetical rapid collapse of the old industry in the third quarter of the third century. The state, now directly supporting the armourers, naturally wanted cheap, functional and above all quick-toproduce designs. Perhaps the initial result was the general adoption of Danubian type Spangenhelme by the armourers supplying the Illyrian cavalry force of Gallienus, Aurelian and Probus. These troops, many of whom were barbarians from across the Danube, formed the elite of the Tetrarchic armies. Hence the Spangenhelme of Galerius' household troops. Diocletian, who reorganised the army and founded the new arms factories, is most likely to have been responsible for the introduction of the new bipartite ridge helmets. There seems little reason for attributing their dissemination to Gonstantine, as the Berkasovo finds show that they were already established in Licinius' army perhaps as early as AD 314. It is very tempting to link their appearance with the building of the new factories, and to see the opening of the fabricae as both the opportunity and the reason for the introduction of the new, and definitive ridge helmet types. While their Eastern inspiration well in tune with the Tetrarchic switch from Illyrian austerity to oriental splendour, it seems to me that the main motivation was more practical. The Partho-Sassanian prototypes met the requirement for simplicity of manufacture, but were substantially redesigned to meet Roman standards of protection. Hence the addition of plate neck- and cheek guards to all versions. Similarly, the types with a separate brow band, whether this feature was of Danubian or Persian origin or both, were revised. The composite skull was fitted to the outside of the brow band rather than the inside, improving protection by increasing the clearance between the plates and the wearer's head. On the other hand, elimination of hinges and other difficult forgings made them suitable for rapid mass production by even a semi-skilled workforce. The new designs betray much careful thought, as does the distribution of the factories in which they were made. Much more than simply a whim of fashion, the appearance of new style helmets was a result of the 'nationalisation' of the arms industry at the end of the third century. This reinterpretation of the development of Imperial helmet design suggests that there was no simple unilinear sequence. It was part of a much wider network involving several cultural groupings, all with their own traditions of helmet construction, all of which to a greater or lesser degree influenced the other. Thus early Imperial helmets evolved from various currents of Hellenistic, Italian and Gallic design. If radial helmets came to Rome from the Danube and ridge helmets from across the Euphrates, then the Eastern European and Iranian peoples who transmitted them may well have influenced each other via the nomads of Central Asia. Further, the interaction between Rome and her neighbours was not necessarily unidirectional. The reinforcing plate down the front of the Dura helmet appears to owe its inspiration to Roman prototypes of the second and early third centuries! Evidently, we are dealing with a complex web of influences operating over prolonged periods.

It is exactly the opposite: Even the finest pieces hardly match up to second century standards of construction.

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