Helmet Handles

[Matt Lukes]

Does anyone know if the same style of carrying handle that is often on the neckguard of helmets was ever used for other purposes? I've recently acquired 3 examples of what I thought were helmet handles, but when they arrived today I found that they're all VERY different in size- the largest one seems rather too big for a helmet. Unfortunately, none of the images of helmets I've found has a scale, I can't tell for sure.

The large one is about 12.5cm in width, the small one is only 4.5cm, the middle one is 5.5cm.

Here's a picture of them and if anyone can provide any further information, it would be much appreciated.

Matt

[LUCIUS ALFENUS AVITIANUS]

SALVE

Many of that handles can be from situlae (metal recipients), or probably from some kind of wooden furniture. All that ansae was very similar in shape

[aitor iriarte]

The lower one belonged probably to a cauldron or bucket. The other two belonged without doubt to furniture, as their long attachment shanks prove (you can even measure how thick was the door/drawer front of the upper one)
Sorry, not one of them belonged to helmets

Aitor

[Matt Lukes]

Ah, okay, so the answer to my question is that this style of handle was indeed common, or at least appeared on rather more objects than helmets?

Now Aitor, when you say that the pin shank length proves the handles with them are not from helmets, are you saying that absolutely no helmet handle pins had shanks this long? It makes sense that only short shanks would be necessary if the pin is only going through the relatively thin metal of a helmet neckguard, however just that fact doesn't necessarily preclude longer pins- or are you basing this on the artifactual evidence? Unfortunately, none of the images I've been able to find show the underside of helmet neckguards, so I really have no idea how long the pins might have been.

I too had actually wondered about a furniture origin when I saw the position of the bends in the pins of the mid-sized handle- but then both examples of Niedermörmter helmet have the handle raised on a pair of convex 'studs' such that their pins would be bent rather far down the shanks too. And while I don't mean to suggest this one may be from that helmet type, there is a fragment of sheet metal just below the loop on one of the pins that looks like it was something the pin passed through- interestingly like those 'studs'. Actually, the Imperial Italic I in Worms has a handle raised like this as well. If that handle is from piece of furniture, it was a very heavy piece- the distance from the pins' loops to the bends is 16.5mm- so that's one thick door or drawer front.

The small handle's pins seem to have been un-bent at some point (suggesting it was removed rather than whatever it was attached to having simply decayed) and interestingly enough, the thickness of whatever this was is similar to that of the previous handle- about 14mm.

Now I agree that the big one had to be from something rather sizable- and a bucket or cauldron certainly do seem reasonable possibilities.

Thanks guys.

Matt

[Caballo]

Here's a picture from the Real Gear section of the Guttmann I showing the underside of the handles. Quite a long "tang"!

[Matt Lukes]

That's very interesting Britannicus- thanks. So the pin's shank length isn't diagnostic of helmet vs. anything else, although certainly if the pin isn't bent right next to the loop it could be from something other than a helmet. Scaling up from the image above, the distance between the pins appears to be in the area of 4-4.5cm, suggesting at least that it's not size that precludes the smaller two of my handles from being from helmets- and that's what I'd really wondered about.

Matt

[aitor iriarte]

Matt,
As you say, the distance from the loop to the bent is the diagnostic feature, not the handle's size or the shanks' lenght!
16'5 mm is not very thick for Roman furniture. I think that the middle handle belonged to furniture too because it can discerned on the left shank a straightened-up bent at approximately the same distance that that belonging to the upper handle... :wink:

Aitor

[LUCIUS ALFENUS AVITIANUS]

It's a tendency of roman military entusiastics to think that all the roman metal stuff belongs to military items.

Roman have civil population, too. :lol: