Banded armour (manicas) and archery

[Lysimachos]

The Pergamon banded armour is indeed made up of full circles, but there is good reason based on how the openings are depicted to think that those are in fact some kind of (at least somewhat) flexible material. The Chirik Rabat finds have been reconstructed by Tolstov, the original excavator, as reaching only to the elbow, but without good reason - we know that the panoply is incomplete, because the entire body has not been preserved, so it is not clear how many further bands are missing. You might also want to check out the banded armour from Ai Khanoum, though I think that only leg armour was found in that case, but I think it was semi-circular as well.

I have to admit that I have wondered why so much art seems to show full circles, yet all the archaeological examples from Central Asia (Chirik Rabat, Ai Khanoum, Taxila)that I know of seem to be semi-circles.

Answers I have considered include:

• Both semi-circular and full circular ones existed, but we have only found the semi-circular kind (not out of the realm of possibility with the small numbers found, though if you add in examples Roman manica, that might change).
  
  
  
• Full circles were made by combining two semi-circular guards. This could provide a little more flexibility, but you would have to be careful about the two sides snagging.
  
  
• Fully circular examples were made of a more flexible, organic material which would not be as well preserved.
  
  
• Fully circular guards did not exist, and the artists made it up. This seems unlikely to me as some of the art apparently depicting such armor seems to be quite precise and accurate in other respects.
  

It is possible to craft manicas that fully encircle the arm and yes they do work well if u work out the elbow diameter for movement first/ as you go.

Do you have any pictures of modern or ancient examples of this? I'd be interested to see any images of fully circular arm guards.

[daryush]

Thanks for the input everybody!

I had a closer look at the diagrams from Taxila. Is this a bulging out of the armour to accommodate the elbow? (like an elbow cop)

Or is it simply a drawing mistake?

[Lysimachos]

It's hard to tell exactly what's going on there even with the better drawings from the original report. I can't tell if the bands are just shifted over, they got squished flatter than the adjacent plates in the ground, or what. It's also hard to know if there are bands missing, or how much and what part of the arm (or leg!) the surviving elements were meant to cover.

[richard robinson]

Sorry. I can only cite gladiator reliefs for ancient sources and am waiting for fotos of my friends manica to be posted to me. Mine works but it is ugly in comparison. I have been waiting for said fotos of my friends manica so cannot promise any soon uploading. Sorry.

[daryush]

I thought I ought to report back with some findings of my research.

I recently examined photographs of the rock reliefs at Naqsh-e-Rostam that were e-mailed to me by my friend in Iran. They clearly show a two-piece manica - a rerebrace and a vambrace. One of the knights has an overlap of the two pieces at the elbow, the other does not.

This would make it all much easier!

Is there any evidence either way stating whether or not such a construction would also be found in eg: Indo-Saka and Kushan armour?