How common lorica segmentata actually was?

[jvrjenivs]

Yes, I agree with that.
I think we can make relative estimates, based on the labour involved, though.
Ring mail would be a bit more labour intensive, so it would technically be the more expensive product to produce. Not a monetary value, but just based on resources required.

True, but how does larbour pricing relate to material costs? EG. is larbour or material contributing more to the final price of a piece?

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

You can't exclude one or the other. The labour would require expenditure in food, clothing, housing. And the material costs would be what ever the value was.
Nothing is free.
One man can produce a set of steel plates quite quickly, the time required for one man to produce a ring shirt would be considerably longer.
You could have a team working on the production of the parts and assembly of the shirt,
but it would add to the over all cost in terms of labour, even if the material cost remained the same. Even a team of slaves require feeding.
Still no monetary value as such, but the value is relative. mile:

[Crispvs]

Whilst it is true that nothing comes for free, modern ideas of cost don't necessarily apply. In an economy built on slave labour, the cost of buying the skilled slaves to work in the workshop, or alternately of training up unskilled slaves would have been considerable. However, as the workshop produced profits the cost of purchasing the workers would effectively be paid back. Economies of scale can play their part too. It is true that everyone needs clothing, food and housing, but it could cost the same to house ten men as it cost to house one man - how many people can you fit in a room? Clothing does not need to be bought often either (perhaps once a year) and even then it could (as Cato recommends) be make from the cut up remains of worn out clothing. It is true that you need to spend more on food, but if the cost of the worker's food is the only cost associated with his labour, the cost of production would be almost entirely down to material and transport costs. The labour cost which is such a large component of modern costings would be almost non-existent.

Crispvs

[kranger3]

You beat me to it, Crispvs!

Indeed, a "free" workforce doesn't cost the same amount to maintain than a slave workforce. Since you can take out wage from the equation, you just need an initial investment to buy your labour force, then it's a matter of feeding and housing them, both of which can be done to a lower standard than a "free" worker, and buying the raw material.

Now, even though mail is indeed more time-intensive to make, we might have to look at the actual process required to produce both types of armour. Making a mail armour is quite straight forward: making the rings and rivets, then assemble the thing. You can have your trained/designated staff to coil and produce the rings/rivets, while you have your untrained workers doing the assembly. Now, forging a LS, that's a wee bit different. More forging involved, more precision cutting, decoration, hinges, etc. You might need more specialized workers, although the output of finished products might be higher.

What do you guys think?

[Crispvs]

I think mail would become less straightforward if we considered that the wire the rings were made from would have to be made first, This would involve hammering iron into long, very thin lengths, which is surely a very tricky thing to do without snapping the metal with the hammer once it becomes very thin. Next, the forged pieces of iron would have to be drawn through progressively smaller draw holes to make wire. All in all, the manufacture of wire was a specialised and time consuming process, as well as being one which had to be undertaken before you could even think about making mail.

Crispvs

[Darth_Roach]

So we actually don't know which was more expensive in what way?

[jvrjenivs]

So we actually don't know which was more expensive in what way?

Exactly!

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

Yes, Rispus! But we don't know if the workforce was slave or freemen!
I would imagine many were talented craftsmen, and as I said, mail is far more labour intensive
By it's very nature.

[Crispvs]

So why should a slave not be a talented craftsman? Skills were not limited to the free. Most publishers owned a workforce of literate slaves who could collectively produce multiple copies of a book. Why should the equivalent not be true of an armourer?

Not all slaves worked in fields or pushed mill wheels around, although some certainly did. By the same token, not all slaves were domestic servants or gladiators.

Crispvs

[Dan Howard]

After learning what is actually required for ancient peoples to produce mail (including the initial wire production), I'm pretty convinced that mail was more time consuming and more expensive to produce than any other type of armour in existence. Whether that was a factor in the use of segmentata is open to speculation.

[kranger3]

I'm pretty convinced that mail was more time consuming and more expensive to produce than any other type of armour in existence.

If so, then it also begs the question: why was it also one of the most widespread, if not THE most widespread, type for armour for hundreds of years, before and after our time period...? If it was so expensive/time consuming compared to other types, it would not have been so widely used during the late Empire/early Middle Ages, a time of particularly rough economic conditions.

There must be something about mail that makes it attractive whatever the economic conditions or available means of production, compared to other types of armour. Effectiveness must not be the top priority.

[john roberts]

One factor may be that mail, if cared for properly, lasts just about forever. It isn't subject to the fatiguing, bending and denting of sheet metal. A hamata in use in Marius's day may well have still been in use in Vespasian's. Over the centuries the stock of hamatas would continue to have grown so that it remained the most abundant form of armor to be had.

[Sean Manning]

I'm pretty convinced that mail was more time consuming and more expensive to produce than any other type of armour in existence.

If so, then it also begs the question: why was it also one of the most widespread, if not THE most widespread, type for armour for hundreds of years, before and after our time period...? If it was so expensive/time consuming compared to other types, it would not have been so widely used during the late Empire/early Middle Ages, a time of particularly rough economic conditions.

There must be something about mail that makes it attractive whatever the economic conditions or available means of production, compared to other types of armour. Effectiveness must not be the top priority.

You are assuming that cost is the only important factor. Just looking at modern NATO countries should suggest that something is wrong with that: we pay for lots of expensive, high-tech kit to fight rebels with rifles and fertilizer bombs, or tyrannoi with Soviet export kit from the 1960s and 1970s. Clearly, NATO decisionmakers consider other things than how to get the most firepower per million dollars.

Mail is flexible, light for its strength, and can cover every part of the body. It could be produced at any scale from a small shop to a large factory, but costs dropped drastically as the scale of production increased (from 1200 to 1300 in England, the cost dropped by roughly a factor of four as the metal industry expanded). Those are all attractive things about mail that made it such a popular armour.

[Crispianus]

Hi all..
One or two things...

Iron is common and tin and copper isnt...
Iron is fairly easy to produce in quantity using basic materials available everywhere...
The quality will vary depending on the source, impuritys and the knowledge of the smith...
Carburisation(conversion of iron to steel) was known...
Phospheric iron can be as hard as steel...
Working sheet iron forge welded in layers from multiple billets is fairly easy to do but labour intensive without machinery (water powered hammers), is tougher and springier then mild steel, is a better material and a lot less prone to rust...

Essentially Segmentata short cuts the mail making process and allows for a less consistant material, as forged iron has many impuritys this depends on how the wire and rings are produced for mail(forged, punched or drawn), material would likely be inconsistant overall....


From a time element mail is more time consuming and requires a higher skill level overall, not every thing is done by hand alone though....

The main work in any armour would probarbly be the initial production of the basic materials, at that point costs would likely be the same...



(Ivor)Crispianus

[Gaius Colletti]

why was it also one of the most widespread, if not THE most widespread, type for armour for hundreds of years, before and after our time period...? If it was so expensive/time consuming compared to other types, it would not have been so widely used during the late Empire/early Middle Ages, a time of particularly rough economic conditions.

Just because it was expensive does not mean it was not feasible. Although I have to argue that you are a little too forward. Chain was relatively common after Rome, but other armors became common too, lamellar armor comes to mind. Chain as far as I know quickly faded out as plate armor became more advanced in the later middle ages. The plate armor that knights wore (think Gothic) was specifically tailored to a knight who learned to move in it like it was his own skin.

Another thing to take into consideration was that after Rome, and especially the Middle Ages, the only people who had full body armor became the knights and nobles, with infantry having little to no armor