Lorica segmentata from Caerleon

[mcbishop]

It's very, very odd.

Or very, very apron. ;-) ) Rings on the underside around the shank would be a giveaway...

Mike Bishop

[Caballo]

One thing which I don't think has been clear (or at least wasn't to me) is that those small discs have integral shanks, more like round headed rivets or pins than anything else. The ends of the shanks are bent, but not enough (in my opinion) to secure them into a leather backing (as conjectured on site). It's very, very odd.

Thanks- does that mean that they were clenched like caligae hobnails? Perhaps remains of washers on the shank? Look forward to the pics (hopefully).

[Peroni]

Look forward to seeing some better photos if Matt can post them!

[Medicus matt]

It's very, very odd.

Or very, very apron. ;-) ) Rings on the underside around the shank would be a giveaway...

Mike Bishop

I've seen a pic of one isolated larger shanked stud that looks like it came from a cingulum.

[Medicus matt]

Thanks- does that mean that they were clenched like caligae hobnails?

EXACTLY like hobnails. So the leather they were going into must have been substantial stuff.

[Peroni]

Matt wrote...

EXACTLY like hobnails. So the leather they were going into must have been substantial stuff.

Perhaps an upper shoulder guard?? Finger's crossed - it may actually be an example of the famous Alba Iulia segmentata! Scale shoulder guards on a segmented Newstead-type plate cuirass :?:

[Caratacus]

Looking at the structural evidence, I'd guess that one of the walls collapsed inwards, burying some of the contents.

Although it may well be very premature as yet to say what might have happened here (and, of course, it's more likely that we will never know for sure), there are some oddities. Apart from this one room, everything seems to have been cleaned out of the other rooms in this warehouse. Only in this one was the armour scattered all over the floor. In some ways, it is very suggestive of the the so-called 'armoury' at Carnuntum. When von Groller excavated this, it seemed as though the armour was stored on shelving against the walls and that when the place was demolished/burned down, the shelves came off the walls and scattered the contents all over the floor.

The armour here does not look like a hoard (as with Corbridge and also the BT excavation at Caerleon) which had been gathered together for reprocessing. If this were the case, it might have been expected that the metallic objects would be more or less in one place. This looks almost like it was simply discarded as being of no further use. It may have been in that store-room for some time and when they came to clean the block out, this was simply left there, strewn over the floor, because they couldn't be bothered to do anything further with it! Sounds sad, I know! You can almost imagine some Roman supply officer going through the lot: "Well have this, but [throwing it over his shoulder] this is no b**** use to anyone!"

Mike Thomas
(Caratacus)

[markusaurelius]

This looks almost like it was simply discarded as being of no further use

You'd think the value of these metal items, ever for simply their raw material value would far outweigh simply leaving them. The amount of work that it took to take some metal from a rock and turn it into a nice bronze disk is crazy if you compare to today!

[jkaler48]

I was there. We were moving out and I didn't want to carry more heavy junk so I spread it out over the floor so it was easier to put a layer of dirt/hay/debris over it as I also did not want to bother with the time needed for digging a hole!

[Matthew Amt]

You'd think the value of these metal items, ever for simply their raw material value would far outweigh simply leaving them. The amount of work that it took to take some metal from a rock and turn it into a nice bronze disk is crazy if you compare to today!

Happened all the time, though. Look at Inchtuthil, where they buried *ten tons* of nails! Not to mention the Corbridge hoard. Compared to modern junkyards, that's nothing.

Matthew

[Astiryu1]

But then you have the scrap metal yards as well! It would make sense to keep a few parts pieces around for fixing pieces still in service. If most armor pieces were standardized the hinges and all could be recycled pretty quickly. That's just my personal opinion though.

[Crispvs]

Looking at the Carlisle manicae, it is obvious that broken items were recycled, and judging not only by them but also by the remaining pieces of most shield covers which have been found (which for the most part are simply edge pieces cut from whatever could be salvaged and which are rarely illustrated in books) probably quite intensively. The exception to this is generally thought to be when units were vacating a fort and probably could not easily take their accumulated scrap with them, no matter now valuable it might have been had they stayed longer and been able to make use of it. Presumably Legio XX did not have the capacity to move ten tons of nails in one go along with everything else which had to be taken when they demolished Inchtuthil. You can carry a lot to a place in small amounts over a long period but it is much more difficult to take it all away again in one go. It may be that scrap metal saved with a view to recycling was consistently and deliberately omitted from the baggage of a departing force. The ten tons of nails could not be carried so they were buried, presumably to hide them from those who might make use of the iron to make weapons for use against the Romans. Something similar may have happened in Caerleon, although there, it seems to me to have been some entirely different scenario, perhaps closer to whatever happened at South Shields, which ensured the survival of a mail shirt.

Crispvs

[sha9cmm]

Hi, thought i would get involved. My name is Chris i'm an archaeology student from cardiff and I actually found and excavated the armour in priory field, I will probably be able to get some good photos up on hear at some point if people want a better look, it is all still partially excavated but you can make out most of it. It is weird how the armour had been deposited, must have been a discarded antique to the Romans already and sort of looked more like a collection of several different types of armour including squamata, but it does seem that it had been buried in the collapse of our room and possibly even from a second story room. On the other hand, it looked like parts of the store house had been lived in after the Roman withdrawal. Maybe only half the store house collapsed? oh yes and there was the fact we had early 2nd century coins coming out around the armour... wish the dig could have been longer, there is a few big unanswered questions.

Chris

[sha9cmm]

Can’t seem to add the photos directly but some of our find photos are on the dig blog http://www.britarch.ac.uk/caf/wikka.php?wakka=CLFBlog5
here are links to some of mine but they are mostly the strips of iron that i worked on and i am missing photos of some of the other small finds found around the armour.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=1 ... 1115165612

should be able to look through some of them, not uploaded the rest of my camera, including a Cua object that was joined to the iron which was basically a swirl with carvings on the inside.


Even better try my poorly written blog.. http://chrisarchaeology.blogspot.com

Chris

[MARCvSVIBIvSMAvRINvS]

Hello Chris, and welcome on the board of course...

Do you have any clear photograph of the bronze piece with the head in relief ? That looks very interesting, especially if it would be a piece of a muscular torso, a greave part or even a plate which could be similar to the lock plates found in the Netherlands for either a squamata or maybe even a hamata..

M.VIB.M.