Roman helmets: Imperial Gallic/Italic and Ridge - comparisons and sources

[CaesarAugustus]

A paper from 1986 and doesn't cover the superiority of single piece vs multi part helmets, nor does it mention that some of these ridge helmets were better decorated than Gallic/Italic ones! (Bishop & Coulston Roman Military Equipment pp 210-216)

Ridge helmets existed side by side with Niederbieber/Heddernheim type helmets. While spangenhelms are depicted on Trajan's Column, they weren't displaced by ridge helmets, but in fact displaced helmets of bipartite construction by the 6th Century.

That superiority is covered by material science, which laws are the same of 2 thousands years ago. For the decoration, we are talking about the protection, this topic is about protection, if you want to discuss about the decoration, please open another topic.

And, spangenhelms helmets and ridge helmets share the same concept, flanked parts united by rivets. It is the same principle, and is subject to the same physical laws and structural issues.

For the year, a valid point is always valid, regardless the year. And, in fact, that paper is far better than comments that are written in these days.

Finally, there is the reply to the ones that are arguing that Romans have adopted the new helmet when they have seen that. This is not true and is witnessed by the adoption of the spangenhelms, that was really well known at least from the first century, but not used before the III century, apart from auxiliary corps. Instead, in the III century Romans adopted it widely. At the same way, Romans well known the Ridge, at least from the Shapur I campaigns, but they did not adopted it for long time, preferring to continue to use they better helmets, the italic one.

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Solid bowl helmets do provide better protection than a multi-piece helmet of similar weight - if they are made to the same standard. But they also require substantial more work and skill to create and they are much harder to repair. If you want similar protection from a multi-piece helmet, all you need to do is increase the weight by a fraction. I'm not sure how replacing a (say) 2.5 pound helmet with a 3 pound helmet is evidence of some kind of collapse - especially if the multi-piece process allows the factory to turn out two-three times more helmets for the same cost and production time as a solid-bowl helmet. It suggests to me that they streamlined the process to enable them to equip far more men than previously with more uniform and standardised gear, which is the opposite of a collapse. Enforcing standards and having strict quality control will result in a better multi-piece helmet than a single-bowl helmet that was made without those procedures in place. Sticking with single-bowl helmets would slow down production, increase costs, and make helmets harder to repair, for nothing more substantial than a tiny reduction in a soldier's load.

Monoblock helmets require substantial more work and skill to create and they are much harder to repair: true, for sure.
Solid bowl helmets do provide better protection than a multi-piece helmet of similar weight - if they are made to the same standard: basically true.
If you want similar protection from a multi-piece helmet, all you need to do is increase the weight by a fraction: to be proved what is this fraction. And, not negligible factor, if you increase the weight you increase the probability that the head and/or the neck will suffer for trauma in case of impacts, it is not just a tiny reduction in a soldier load. You can reduce weight by reducing the covered area, for example by removing the neck protection, but you're protecting less, so the chances of being hit / injured / killed increase.

The monoblock increase costs, the helmet is harder to repair, there are less people that can do it and so on? Yes, for sure, is what I am already telling.
The point is that previously the empire was able to offer this. Give me the exaggerated comparison, but give the idea: if you have a society that can support a car, you will drive a car, despite the fact that a car is far more expensive than a wagon, it is harder to repair, require skilled mechanical, skilled workers to make it and so on. This is an exaggerated comparison, but it makes the idea.

Following the third century crisis, the society was not any more able to support some quality products. The answer from the imperial infrastructure has been to renounce to this quality.