Padded Armour

[Tarbicus]

You know, I suspect now that it's a disclaimer to make sure some dumb schmuck who decides to hold a candle too close to their oil painting doesn't sue the makers. A bit like the person who ate her McDonald's when it was waaaay too hot, when not even a one year old would have put it in their mouth, successfully sued them for negligence and a seven figure sum.

However, this one does worry me;

WARNING: This product contains chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer, and birth defects or other reproductive harm.

But then again I smoke, so not only will I get cancer I'll also blow myself up in the process :roll:

[petrinus]

limited time to rifle through all the available threads. ive still a lot to learn so any one who can educate me more so-appreciated. on what occassions was the subarmalis worn, was it an undergarment for the seg worn over the tunic or what?

[petrinus]

never mind about the subarmalis bit....google was good to me (and legxx has a decent website).

[Malleus]

WARNING: This product contains chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer, and birth defects or other reproductive harm

There are a LOT of things which are known to the State of California that the REST of the world do not agree with. The disclaimer is phrased in that way so that the manufacturer admits no liability while complying with California law requiring warning labels. California is a big market, but the Politics is run by Fruits and Nuts, as the old saying goes.

Steve/ Malleus

[Ironhand]

I'm guessing Legio VI will be taking a field trip to Colorado this weekend. :twisted: :wink:

[bisdent]

Can you give us some more info on the context? Tombstone or campaign monument? Period? Etc?

Louis Lefebvre, in his catalogue of the Museum of Arlon (L. Lefebvre, Le Musée Luxembourgeois, Bruxelles, 1990), suggest that the relief could be a component of a great monument that commemorate the victory of Vespasian on Valentinus who tryed to organise a revolt between Rome (60-70 PCN).

The dimensions are 58 x 108 x 41 cm. The conditions of found are not known, but the relief was probably found in the foundations of the wall of the castrum of Late Antiquity.

The catalogue of Louis Lefebvre is unfortunately no more available, but a new relooked catalogue will be edited by the Institut Archéologique du Luxembourg this year.

[Tim Edwards]

I have revived this ancient but excellent thread because I think we have fresh evidence.

A conference on Military Textiles examined the following themes:

Purchase orders of military garments from papyri of Roman Egypt by Kerstin Dross, University of Marburg
• Ancient Greek linen corselet by Eero Jarva, University of Oulu, Finland
• Linen Corselets in Etruscan Culture by Margarita Gleba, CTR
• The Iberian’s linothorakes in Roman Army: an approach to Military Textiles in Antiquity by Carmen Alfaro Giner, University of Valencia
• Covering the vitals: the use of textiles as part of the defence armour in the Roman army by Jorit Wintjes, University of Würzburg
• Military Textiles at Masada: fragments of linen armour and fragments of Roman legionary cloaks by Hero Granger Taylor, London
• Il miles di Herculaneum by Umberto Pappalardo, University “Suor Orsola Benincasa”, Naples
• Roman military tunics as shown on the grave stones in Mainz by Astrid Böhme-Schönberger, Direktion Landesarchäologie, Mainz
• Late Antique Egyptian military garments? by Annette Paetz gen. Schieck, Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen, Mannheim
• Dressed for the occasion. Clothes and context in the Roman army by Michael A. Speidel, MAVORS, Basel
• Scandinavian warrior costume in the Iron Age weapon deposits by Susan Möller-Wiering,CTR
• “Clothing” Fleets: The Supply and Cost

All are interesting but I have highlighted one of particular relevance, concerning claims of pteryges found at Masada.

See here for an abstract:

http://ctr.hum.ku.dk/upload/application ... %20May.pdf

Apparently the find is weft twined, like the known greave/lining found at Dura Europos. This latter was apparently some 5mm thick!!!

[attachment=0:1899dh1q]<!-- ia0 Dura Europos Textile244guard - Copy.jpg<!-- ia0 [/attachment:1899dh1q]

This leads me to think one or two layers would be sufficient.

This confirms very neatly Travis' assertion that ancient statuary showing weave on pteryges looked to be weft faced, a very good guess it turns out!! Though few seem to have developed his assertion.

We reenactors should look more seriously at reconstructing the weave of Roman military textiles, here being a very good example. We get too caught up on the shiny bits!

For examples of what weft twining looks like, and how it is made see here:

http://www.beduinweaving.com/webarchive/weft/weft01.htm

Food for thought...

[Endre Fodstad]

A bit late?

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[Marcus Aemilius Longinus]

Regarding the straw turning to "mush", it has sometimes occurred to me that the vertical quilting often depicted on aketons/gambesons/subarmali might have been open ended, enabling old straw to be removed and new, more rigid, straw to be inserted in its place, before the 'quilting' was sewn or laced up again.
Just a thought.

Crispvs

I hope no one minds if I revive the thread again :roll: by posting about something relevant to an earlier part of this thread even if rather outdated.

I made my newest subarmalis in a similar way to the method described here with vertical quilting or tubes and the use of straw as stuffing. Unfortunately it is machine stiched but otherwise is in the came general spirit of this type of subarmalis. When making the subarmalis, I found that most of the effort of making it actually went into stuffing the staw into the subarmalis(allowing for the machine stiching) IMO by the time the staw had turned to mush one would be almost as well replacing the entire garment as much as the straw. This is keeping in mind the rate at which soldiers seemed to go through their tunics. I should mention that the subarmalis itself is light weighing less than my white tunic which is 1.4 by 1.5 metres and quite heavy duty with the depth varying somewhat between 2-3cm thick. I will try to post pictures up later tomorrow.

[Paullus Scipio]

I can't get the link to work....usual "error 404" each time........

[Endre Fodstad]

On what basis is it that people stuff their padded armour with straw? All western surviving examples of padded armour that I know of are layered textiles, and the more detailed descriptions of their manufacture also indicate layered-and-stitched construction.

Stuffing is, as far as I know, limited to helmet padding (mostly horsehair), where it makes sense as it is only supposed to serve as padding, not provide the additional protection layered-and-stitched textile provides.

[Crispvs]

My suggestion was based on my understanding that in late medieval times some gambesons / aketons were apparently stuffed with straw and was merely there to provide a practical possibility for something someone else had suggested. I see no reason why it would not work but I certainly did not mean to suggest that the ancients would have preferred it as a method over layered textile.

Crispvs

[Endre Fodstad]

No...all surviving medieval examples (that are not helmet lining and similar) are layered textile, as far as I know. Do you know any medieval references to stuffed straw or surviving examples? We have a few surviving examples of the others sort, the earliest being dated to the 12th/13th century (ah, reliquiaries...without them we'd have to rely purely on archaeology, heaven forbid ). Stuffing will make the armour serve well as pure padding, but when you quilt textile layers together you get an effect that is quite efficient as armour in itself; the same principle as modern bulletproof vests.

The (stuffed straw)horsehair idea for body armour has been quite prevalent in medieval reenactment circles, but as far as I know it is not based on anything solid - it is an overinterpretation of the helmet liners.

[Crispvs]

Well, as far as I recall, I first read of the idea in the Osprey book (I know, I know) 'The Swiss at War 1300-1500'. As I have never specialised in that period I never looked any further into the idea or checked on the source of the information.

Crispvs

[Marcus Aemilius Longinus]

Does this work for you ? http://s896.photobucket.com/home/Conman10/index

My idea for this method came partly from seeing medieval reenactor's gambesons and partly from the pictures of possible subarmalii in Graham Sumner's Roman Military Dress. Also the Arlon relief of the cavalrymen seem to show something similar to what I had in mind. While almost a millenia later, the byzantine army is thought to have used gambesons called kavadions made in a similar way with a silk facing and a raw cotton filling. I found this in the Osprey book Byzantine Infantry man Eastern Roman Empirec.900-1204. More specifically the book states that this comes from a field manual written by the Emperor Nikeforos Fokas.
I cant say I have any evidence of straw as padding instead of anything else although I should mention that before this I had made a similar padded garment using the cotton wadding used as stuffing in pillows and duvets. I found that this was quite heavy (4 Kg) while my recent straw on is only about 1.8kg. I believe that this is due mainly to that the straw is a lot harder to compress due to it's rigid nature and therefore means one needs to stuff a padded garment like this with a greater ammount (weight wise) of raw wool/cotton wadding or other similar materials to acheive a similar effect. Considering that an infantryman would have to carry the thing all day it would be simple logic that they would choose the lightest material available which would also seem to be the most cost effective. However I understand that Roman logic does not always corespond with modern logic as seen by the byzantine equivalant above.