Very New light on roman tents construction

[John Conyard]

Thank you!

[M. Demetrius]

Two types of tents are sort of automatic:
Wedge tents, amounting to a rectangle over a pole or rope between two support points.
Circular tents, a skin, hide or rectangle suspended from a single overhead rope or a single pole.

Pretty much all other tents are either variations on this theme (wedge tents become wall tents, pole tents become tipis or Sibleys) but basically anything else requires deliberate sewing-to-shape. So for the most ancient, probably the most likely is either wedge or circular. I'm not an archeologist, but I've been camping since way back in the 20th century, and managed to learn a couple of things. A large rectangle can be rigged a hundred ways...but the wedge is the simplest. A square converts fairly easily to a pyramid.

**

Concerning the papilio, however, from what I've collected in various tidbits from places, it doesn't seem likely that all 8 men would be in the tent at any given time. One or two would be on guard duty, one on fire duty, one on other duty, etc., and these duties changed shifts during the night. Figure it like this:
9' x 9' tent = 81 square feet.
6' x 2' rectangle of man reclining = 12 square feet
12 x 8 = 96 square feet.

Crowding in a little, you could squeeze all 8 into the tent, but there would simply be no space for anything else, armor, poles, sarcinae, simply would not fit.

9' x 9' = 81 sq ft.
6' x 2' = 12 sq ft.
12 x 4 = 48. This gives room at the low sides to store the gear, and space in the taller, center section for 4 men to sleep with a little space left over.

We are hoping to be able to afford papiliones enough so that there will be one for each two men in the group. But one thing at a time...we are still finishing the painting of the tents we have already.

[garrelt]

Back in the 1980/1990ties there was a small group in the Western European Viking scene that went on regular fieldtrips (Living and fighting in the woods and other natural surroundings).
They only used replicas of Viking era gear.
As you can imagine, a normal A-frame Viking tent is to heavy to be transported on your back.
So Alban came up with this design, don't know where he got his information from but it worked.
I all these years that I know him, I never asked him that.
http://www.northan.net/

All the (leather) Deurne panels together form a rectangle of 2.16meter by 2.08meters (original could have been 2.4meters by 2.3meters).
Source: De Gouden Helm uit de peel, Feiten en Visies 2006 page 33-51.
This is big enough for 1 person (rider) to be used as a shelter, for an infantry person a cloak, ancient sources are known, would be sufficent (size like a modern Poncho).

But that still leaves the question at the beginning of this topic of what kind of material was used for camp(aign) tents.
Might also be that the material used in one (climatic) Region was different than the material used in another Region.