Leather Lorica Segmentata

[ambrosius]

Crispus wrote:

the authorities were not keen on the sight of weapons in the city

see here an old news about this:
http://www.romanhideout.com/News/2002/t ... 020309.asp

This is a very sad and topsy-turvy situation. Having been virtually mugged by a gang of Gipsy children who were agressively begging
next to the Collosseum, and not seeing any Roman police around to
protect tourists at the national monuments, it amazes me that they
would victimize this guy. The police obviously fail to understand where
the real threat to tourism comes from. I only wish Franchino (or Crispus)
had been around when our party really needed them. :wink:

Ambrosius

[MARCENTIUS]

Once again I challenge Dr D'Amato to show us unambiguous evidence that segmented leather was used on a battlefield anywhere in the world. All he has produced so far is painted sculptures. Somehow we are expected to believe that because a sculpture is coloured red or blue or green then it must be depicting painted leather. Why do you ignore evidence for enamelled bronze such as the armour described by Homer? Why do you ignore the fact that linen can be dyed? Nobody has given even a single reason why leather armour would be made in the segmented style. What benefit does it give on the battlefield?

Dear Dan
having been serious engaged in writing a book and in my job I have not many time to be challenge.
Just to close the question for the existance of banded leather armours, I would like to remind you the asiatic type which you do not believed the existance.
Did you ever read (maybe not) about the Jawshan cuirass?
If not I reccomand you to read the article of Dr David Nicolle about the banded armours exclusivelly made by hardened leather somethimes imitating, by the painting on the external surface, the lamellar armour.
I will not here list the 13 pictures produced by the editor representing the hardened leather cuirass of hooped structure late 12th century or beginning 13th century A.D.
The leather of the cuirass was brightly painted on the same cuirass in different color for each leather band!!!
In the same article, that I invite everybody (that considered my fonts ambiguous and still do not believed in existance of leather banded armour)
to read it.
those are real found specimens (not painting or scupltures) dated with radio carbon 14.
But of couse If somedoby still do not want to believed in the existance of leather banded armour (and the utilization of lether armours in general) be free to claim that those are fake specimens made by me and Dr Nicolle during the night!!!
About the romans time ones further details will be published on my next book.
Best wishes.
P.S. I don' t ignore the enamelled bronze and the linen dyed (both are attested) as well as the leathers ones!!
This is a further confirmation of the reliability of artistic sources (at less that do you think that I have painted by myselfs the Shahnamah from Tabirz...)
Dr. D'Amato

[Praefectusclassis]

David Nicolle has written quite a lot on Medieval warfare. Do you have the name of the article/journal for us Dr.D'Amato for those who are interested?

[aitor iriarte]

Eeerrh, Raffaelle...
Could you give the bibliographic data of David Nicolle's paper. It looks extremely interesting and I'd like to read it!

Aitor

PS: Two shots at the time, Jasper! :wink:

[Tarbicus]

Here's a piece on the Osprey site by David Nicolle, which mentions the Jawshan armour.

"Know your weapons, know your enemy: a mamluk training manual"
[url:354w97rq]http://www.ospreypublishing.com/content2.php/cid=274[/url]

[Tarbicus]

I was just reading up on how to work with leather, and came across this, which may be pertinent to the toughness of leather:

Hardening Leather
First of all you can only harden veg tan leather. That being said you need to first soak all your plates and then dry them. If you do not have a whitney punch then punch holes as described above in them while they are wet, it's easier. Once they are completely dry, and I mean completely (give it a day), you can wax them.

Waxing leather can be dangerous since wax can ignite into flame. What you can do is stick your candle wax in a disposable roasting pan in a double-boiler setup in your oven at 250 degrees or so until it melts. Then put it on the stove and stick a burner on low to keep it heater. Using tongs that you don't care if they get waxy dip each plate in the leather for a couple of minutes and let it absorb. Then simply pull it out, let the excess drip off, and wipe it with a paper towel. When it dries it'll be as hard as wood and as durable as leather. A great material.

[url:28dzn5r6]http://www.diycostume.com/leather_armor.php[/url]

Theoretically, if the plates/bands/pieces were treated this way that would make them more useful as armour.

[Dan Howard]

Just to close the question for the existance of banded leather armours, I would like to remind you the asiatic type which you do not believed the existance.
Did you ever read (maybe not) about the Jawshan cuirass?
If not I reccomand you to read the article of Dr David Nicolle about the banded armours exclusivelly made by hardened leather somethimes imitating, by the painting on the external surface, the lamellar armour.
I will not here list the 13 pictures produced by the editor representing the hardened leather cuirass of hooped structure late 12th century or beginning 13th century A.D.

Yes I have read of the jawshan. Nicolle plays fast and loose with a lot of armour terminologies and is not consistent with their use. FWIW Nicolle (2002d:188) considers a jawshan to be a lamellar cuirass that could be made from iron, horn, or hardened leather, and was usually laced with gut and buckled at the side of the body. However the Digital Lexicon of Dehkhoda considers jawshan to be a combination of mail and plates and not lamellar armor. It is possible that the term refers to both types of armour.

Thank you for the reference to the 12th century leather segmented armour. It is anachronistic by more than a thousand years but at least it shows that the armour was being used somewhere. I found a little more info in "Arms and Armour of the Cursading Era". Page 180 describes an example in a private collection: "Yellow and black stained cuirass consisting of hoops made of stitched layers of hardened leather There is a drawing on p.419.

[Dan Howard]

Theoretically, if the plates/bands/pieces were treated this way that would make them more useful as armour.

Not wax. Wax makes the hardened leather easier to stab or cut with a blade. Another point is that a lot of the medieval cuirbouilli, especially the Italian stuff, was decorated with paint and/or gesso. It isn't possible to apply paint/gesso to wax treated leather. Most of the evidence suggests that leather was "water hardened" not wax hardened.

[Graham Sumner]

Carus Andiae wrote:

It may (or may not) be relevant to your discussion that, contray to previous beliefs, some historians are now suggesting that even the so-called 'sword proof' buff leather coats worn in the 17th-century would have been considered insufficient protection without additional metal armour.

According to Honeywell and Spear ‘The English Civil War, recreated in Colour Photographs’, a Buff Coat could cost anything between £1 10 shillings and £10, equal to the cost of a good quality cavalry horse. Even the cheaper type, were more expensive than a steel cuirass. It would not be surprising then if some coats were better than others.

Leather helmets reappeared in the 18th century in particular amongst British light cavalry and infantry. Ironically many of them were based on classical Roman designs. Presumably they offered better protection than the cloth hats almost everyone else wore at that time. Firemen and miners at this period also sought protection with leather helmets.

As late as 1796, a number of leather breastplates were offered to the Board of Ordnance for consideration. They comprised up to three layers of leather fastened by copper rivets and backed by either horsehair or Hessian and weighed between 3lb and 9lb. They were tested as a defence against pistol and musket shot at ranges of 60 and 20 yards but in spite of passing these tests the designs were never accepted. A photograph of a surviving example could easily pass as a metal cuirass. (source: Beabey and Richardson, see below.)

Thom Richardson and Mark Beabey, the respected leather-worker attached to the Royal Armouries in Leeds wrote an article in ‘The Royal Armouries Yearbook Vol 2 1997’ entitled ‘Hardened Leather Armour’. Beabey himself attempted to recreate a leather helmet. At first he soaked the leather and then stretched it. Later he hardened the leather by heating it almost until it began to char. He concluded that although leather could never equal iron or steel for hardness, strength or durability, it nevertheless possessed all these qualities. He added that with the application of certain techniques the right leather could be enhanced until it was viable as armour, especially when you considered the strength to weight ratio compared with steel and the lower material cost and manufacturing time. Roman leather-workers would undoubtedly have had these techniques and years of experience.

Richardson noted that in Asia, hardened leather laced plate armour existed in China during the Zhou dynasty (date anyone?) until the 19th century. Mention was made of Roman leather armour with reference to Robinson, Bishop and Coulston, and his conclusion was that the so-called leather armour on Roman monuments was mail, embossed bronze or entirely fiction.

In Roman times Pliny the Elder mentions that Hippopotamus armour was useless when wet. Presumably not too much of a problem in Egypt, unless you fell into the Nile! A complete suit of Crocodile armour is on display at the British Museum labelled as Roman Parade armour! There are also at least two other published examples of helmets made from crocodile skin complete with cheek pieces and neck guards. However archaeologists offer a variety of alternative explanations rather than admit that they could actually be armour. A reconstruction of the crocodile armour appears briefly in the ‘Turtle’ sequence of Cleopatra (1963), further proof presumably that this type of armour never existed!

I would not dismiss the idea of leather armour simply on the grounds of taste, ‘why have a horrible leather lorica when you can have a nice shiny metal one’. A dyed leather lorica might have actually appealed more to a Roman. How many of us today would have Red and Black on our Bedroom Walls! (PM Replies only). Nor would I conclude that leather armour was useless because of the qualities, or lack of, of some poor movie or even re-enactors reproductions. One could apply the ‘Crispus’ dagger test to many reconstructed metal loricas that we have probably all seen over the years, those with gaps at the shoulders or around the waist. Commonsense also dictates that other layers of protection would be worn even with metal defences.

The argument that metal gives better protection also takes no consideration of many other factors. Soldiers have sometimes dispensed with the protection that they have been offered either because it is uncomfortable or heavy or more often been denied the best equipment available by penny pinching governments, ‘The British soldier fears nothing except the British War Office’. G.B.Shaw. A situation sadly alive and well even today.

I would conclude therefore that the question we should be asking ourselves is not “could the Romans make leather armourâ€Â

[Dan Howard]

I don't think anyone has entirely dismissed the possibility of Roman leather armour. What has been dismissed is the likelihood that they, or anyone else before the Middle Ages, used segmented leather.

[Goffredo]

First let me say I liked and learned from Graham Sumner's contribution! Thanks Grahm.

Maybe the folks out there that propose hide armor and segmentata in particular should take up some good experimentation and try to obtain hardened leather/hide that would work as armor against various threats (sword thrusts and slashes; spear jabs, lead and stone sling shot, arrows,...): i.e. make some real tests and comparisons with no armor and metallic armor.

As long as the discussion goes on like it does then it is like arguing over how many angles can fit on a needle point. Each person quotes past literature or extrapolates from other cases, or deduces much from sculptures or hold on tight to his favorite myth. The whole idea of experimental archeology and re-enacting is betrayed. By experimenting and trying maybe one cannot prove an idea is correct but it certainly might help fish out those that are wrong.

[Dan Howard]

There isn't any doubt that multiple layers of leather/hide provides good defense against weapons. There have already been studies demonstrating its effectiveness. However, pound for pound, it doesn't provide protection as good as metal plate or mail. There is also no point listing all the cultures that used leather/hide armour since the widespread use of hide defences is indisputable. The argument IMO should focus on what the Roman evidence indicates regarding leather/hide armour. Just because other cultures made use of leather/hide armour does not automatically prove that the Romans did too. Even if it can be demonstrated that the Romans used hide armour it still doesn't prove that any of it was of the "segmentata" style.

[Graham Sumner]

Dan Howard wrote:

There isn't any doubt that multiple layers of leather/hide provides good defense against weapons. There have already been studies demonstrating its effectiveness.

There is also no point listing all the cultures that used leather/hide armour since the widespread use of hide defences is indisputable.

Hello Dan

Ever since Robinson published his book in 1975 the prevalent attitude, in Britain at least, is that the Romans could not have used leather armour because it was impractical.

His argument was succinctly summarized by Bishop and Coulston p.194 of 'Roman Military Equipment', 1993. '....Robinson demonstrated that leather armour was not shown on sculptural monuments. To be protective, it had to be hard rawhide and when Pliny the Elder discusses hippopotamus-skin armour, he says that it was useless when wet - a practical reason why leather armour was not used in the Roman army'.

Tests on leather armour are not always widely known. Do you have any references to the tests that you refer to? The point therefore of listing the other cultures that did use leather armour is to illustrate to this forum that in fact it actually was practical.

Like you I would like to see any indisputable evidence for leather segmentata. We need an archaeologist with your own 'dog with a bone' attitude. The truth as they say is out there!

Perhaps a good starting point would be as Goffredo suggests that someone makes and tests a variety of leather lorica under the same conditions that metal lorica have been tested and publish the results.

Graham.

[Matt Lukes]

Ever since Robinson published his book in 1975 the prevalent attitude, in Britain at least, is that the Romans could not have used leather armour because it was impractical.

His argument was succinctly summarized by Bishop and Coulston p.194 of 'Roman Military Equipment', 1993. '....Robinson demonstrated that leather armour was not shown on sculptural monuments. To be protective, it had to be hard rawhide and when Pliny the Elder discusses hippopotamus-skin armour, he says that it was useless when wet - a practical reason why leather armour was not used in the Roman army'.

It's always been my understanding that leather armor- it must have been a Medieval type I learned about- was specifically soaked in boiling wax to 'harden' it as well as waterproof it- wouldn't it make sense to expect the Romans would have done this too? Now I agree that it'd be best to have real physical evidence that it was used, however I don't see how susceptibility to water means it couldn't have been.

Matt

[Tarbicus]

Can someone specify the conditions and details under which the other segs were tested? It would help anyone inspired to test leather without the possible 'buts' and 'ifs'. Just a 'benchmark' would be useful, ta.