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Quote:This subject again?! LOL Geez- hasn't leather armour been beaten into the ground as a discussion? Yves, it's really a good idea to do a search for basic questions like this one as it's fairly likely in the long history of RAT that it was done before... :wink:
i did but probably i did not use the right words for searching. :?
Yves Goris
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Quote:Argumentative it doesn´t really make sense to debate the usefulness of leather armour per se. As we know our ancestors often made / did things which do not make a lot of sense to us. Using leather armour might be one of these. It makes more sense IMO to simply study the sources.
IMO the sources have been a bit stretched by Mr. D´Amato in this regard. The interpretation IMO lacks some knowledge about the nature of Ancient Art as established by Classical Archaeology. As one example out of many I would like to point at the "green leather cuirass" shown on Etruscan urns, such as the example below. Mr. D´Amato seems not to be aware of the Ancient industry of patinizing bronze by purpose, discussed at length within the discipline. The industry patinized bronze wares in different colours ranging from green over brown to black. A hint to this could also be the green shield rim, as we know from archaeology were often made of bronze as well, simultaneously green helmets on other urns. (if they are not just mere conventions, resp. there were just no other colours available for the painter at the moment etc.) OR green is used here to represent iron, which would explain the green swords, which were certainly not made of green painted leather, I´d say. A similar argument could be made for the "dancing centurion" from Pompeji. Also I don´t see how a smooth sculptural surface is able to give information about the nature of the displayed material. It could in all cases be fabric as well. Last but not least, a technical difference between rawhide and leaather should always be expressed, however Mr. D´Amato is frequently subsuming rawhide under leather.
It looks to me that the colours in the photograph are a bit off... I've seen many Etruscan funerary urns on which remains traces of paint, and I can say that I've never seen one that shows green armour being worn! As you've noted, the fact that the swords are the same colours shows quite clearly that the paint colour is blue, as this was used in contemporary Graeco-Roman painting to represent iron.
Ruben
He had with him the selfsame rifle you see with him now, all mounted in german silver and the name that he\'d give it set with silver wire under the checkpiece in latin: Et In Arcadia Ego. Common enough for a man to name his gun. His is the first and only ever I seen with an inscription from the classics. - Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
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No, it´s not off. You can go there and look at it, it´s green. I took the pic myself. Doesn´t change the argument, though...
Christian K.
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Quote:On the other hand, if it was *rawhide* that was used, I would expect that to decay away very quickly even in circumstances that would preserve leather--though I don't know that for certain! Even if that's the case, however, it leaves us with *no evidence*! And evidence is what we need for any reasonable conclusion.
Two main conditions may preserve organic materials: dry (e.g. desert, salt), and sour/no oxygen (e.g. swamp, well)
Rawhide would be distinguishable from leather if preserved in dry environment, but would be indistinguishable from leather in sour/no oxygen environment, since the acid would tan the rawhide to leather (simplified).
Christian K.
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Quote:No, it´s not off. You can go there and look at it, it´s green. I took the pic myself. Doesn´t change the argument, though...
Then it's clearly just the fading of the colours, since it seems a very bluish green in the photograph anyway. Note the Pseudo-Corinthian helmet on the ground - it's clear that the artist has used yellow to represent bronze (as also on the rim of the other shield on the ground). It's much easier to imagine an iron cuirass at that date than a bronze-bladed machaira or xiphos!
Ruben
He had with him the selfsame rifle you see with him now, all mounted in german silver and the name that he\'d give it set with silver wire under the checkpiece in latin: Et In Arcadia Ego. Common enough for a man to name his gun. His is the first and only ever I seen with an inscription from the classics. - Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
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Quote:No, it´s not off. You can go there and look at it, it´s green. I took the pic myself. Doesn´t change the argument, though...
One must be wary of interpreting colours made from pre-industrial age pigments. I have referred before on RAT to the fact that pigments frequently chnage over time - yellow often fading to cream or white for example.
In this instance, it is well known that many "blue" pigments fade to a bluish-green or even pure green over time. Uniform Buffs of the eighteenth century were puzzled for a long time that contemporary paintings of soldiers from French 'Royal' regiments, which were known to have had Blue facings, appeared in the paintings to have bright green facings, until it was realised that the pigment had changed colour over time......
I'd suggest that Ruben is correct, and this is what has happened in this case.....
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It depends on the pigments. Without a chemical analysis both could be the case. Maybe the painter had no blue, but had to have the thing finished? But, as I said, it doesn´t really matter for the argument...
Christian K.
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Ave Fratres,
I am surprised no one resurrected the crocodile armor thread. It's undeniably leather,,,...but there was heated debate as to if it was supposed to be functional leather armor or more of a cult object. At least it exists and I believe has a reliable context for dating. Then again , it is not in context strictly a roman construction.
Just my two dinars worth of opinion.
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The "crocodile armour" was not tanned, so is rawhide, not leather, and it is comnpletely out of military context, having belonged to sthg. like a temple guard or so (finding spot)..
Christian K.
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Quote:Matt Lukes:944m9n2z Wrote:This subject again?! LOL Geez- hasn't leather armour been beaten into the ground as a discussion? Yves, it's really a good idea to do a search for basic questions like this one as it's fairly likely in the long history of RAT that it was done before... :wink:
i did but probably i did not use the right words for searching. :?
A topic search for 'leather armor' gets you the biggest one 13 pages... link from old RAT
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Quote:Ave Fratres,
I am surprised no one resurrected the crocodile armor thread. It's undeniably leather,,,...but there was heated debate as to if it was supposed to be functional leather armor or more of a cult object. At least it exists and I believe has a reliable context for dating. Then again , it is not in context strictly a roman construction.
Just my two dinars worth of opinion.
Regards from a sunny but cool balkans Arminius Primus aka Al
Hmmm, surely this is the original scale armour!! :roll:
or perhaps it should be classified as callous armour!
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We also might ask the crocodile how well it worked! Hee hee hee....
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As I mentioned many times I don't have problems with leather armours, generally speaking, but I have many troubles with leather segmetatas. In the past the discussion raged on polemic tones overall in Italy.
What is written in the D'Amato's book is correct, and (even if I didn't read it by myself) is referred only to generic leather armour.
One of the main supporter of the idea of the leather segmentata is very well known, and they have a fresh new page that welcomes the new revelations:
http://www.arsdimicandi.net/ad_1_000020.htm
They show on the right-top corner the British Museum supposed armour, that it seems to me not to be a piece of segmentata because it is a single piece of leather, am I right?
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Yeah, that's a girdle; the slits at the front I should think are simply there to allow one to bend forward- otherwise the leather would be a significant impedence to this simple movement.
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right, this IMO would suggest that it cannot be referred to the segmentatas shown on the Trajan's Column.
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