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Hi All,
I am looking to do a big update to my roman armor/timeline excell sheet as I have been reading a lot into byzantine equipment lately. I was wondering two fold if A. there was an established Byzantine helmet typology (post the 5th century) or at least a line of development as I see lot of variations in books and reenactment and in pages like Levantia they seem to say "this is a byzantine helmet" instead of - this was a helmet used in the %th to $%nd century.
This leads me to my other question, I have read that byzantine helmet finds are either rare or are taken from nearby cultures like the Rus, other items like the byzantine Yasevano(?) helmet (see link below) were recreated purely from manuscripts and not physical finds. Is this correct and if so does that mean we take the manuscript and pictoral sources of byzantine hlmets let alone armor with as much of a grain of salt as we take things like Trajans column which show a artistic depiction from a real helmet. Its just that if we rocked up with the segmentata style for Trajans column to an event there would be crickets all round but any form of artistic lamellar seems to get acceptance.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_bH2LXBIfx6c/TI...HELMET.jpg
Damian Laurence Zamprogno
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To be honest, the Byzzies really didn't have their "own" helmet. Things like Phrygian Helmets, Spangenhelmets, and Banded helmets they used and those were commonplace all over europe. In the 13th century they started using turkish and italian equipment extensively, like kettle hats and whatnot.
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Hey Patrick!
Seems like the pictures and the numbering does not correspond to each other. Could you organize them?
Mark - Legio Leonum Valentiniani
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patrick I cannot thank you enough, its been a somewhat harrowing experience finding information so far and its relieving to see more physical specimins though i wish there was a clearer line of development like what we get with roman helmrts.
Damian Laurence Zamprogno
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Try the helmet section on the Wikipedia page on the Komnenian Byzantine army - it is very good, I wrote it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Komnenian_Byzantine_army
You have to remember that Byzantine military equipment was heavily influenced by a number of steppe nomad peoples -from the Huns, to the Mongols. As a result helmet types were often Byzantinized versions of types ultimately of Central Asian origins.
Just to clear up one point the helmet from Yasenovo was an archaeological find, it has a deep lower skull and an upper skull raised from a single-plate, the upper skull also has a cross-piece reinforce (rather on the lines of cross-reinforces on some 2nd-3rd century Roman helmets) - it also has holes on the brow band indicating that it once had a full-face mail aventail attached. The helmet refered to earlier in the thread as a Yasenovo helmet has nothing to do with Yasenovo, it is a putative reconstruction by Dawson from helmets depicted in manuscript illustrations.
Martin
Fac me cocleario vomere!
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Patrick, again thanks! Is there a specific naming/typology with those as we do the Robisnon roman helmets or are they named after their original location.
Urselius, thank you very much! I dont know when I last checked wikipedia for the information and that was increadibly descriptive so again thank you and well done! Also I did have my doubts about the linked helmet in the first comment being the "yasenovo' one, but as it seems to be based solely off manuscripts can it be viewed as an actual form or would it be seen as shakey reconstruction?
If you dont mind my asking then as there are more forms/types is there any specific typology or even developmental line that can be seen leading form the sixth centuries onwards? I think what I am trying to work on is that for earlier periods we have a clear pretty straight forwaard timeline of roman helmets and gear and I am curious as to wether this could continue throughout the Byzantine era.
Damian Laurence Zamprogno
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I'm afraid the sort of typology you are suggesting just isn't possible, at least at present, for Byzantine helmet types. There are just too few examples of Byzantine helmets available. Even the finds that are known are often difficult to date accurately.
One of the reasons that we can look at Roman helmets and categorise them is that many of the "Roman soldiers" who wore them were Celts or Germans, who just loved to throw expensive bits of kit into any body of water they came across, and so preserved them - in archaeology it is known as 'ritual deposition', I think it was just attempts at ‘bribing the gods’. The Byzantines, being Christian didn’t go in for throwing helmets in ponds, unfortunately.
Also for a large part of Byzantine history from c.650 to 950 the vast bulk of the army was decentralised as Themata soldier-farmers; the idea that any form of centralised equipment provision continued through this period is probably unlikely in the extreme. Helmets would have been sourced locally, with a good deal of regional variation in design and production methods.
Martin
Fac me cocleario vomere!
