Corbridge A Breastplates - to cross or not cross diagonally?

[marsvigilia]

"Replicas" of what? You have spent most of the thread completely ignoring the evidence and dismissing the Corbridge evidence as untrustworthy junk. Now you will make a replica!

Replicas of the Hoard. As I've said I've made segs for small bodies and they come closest to the Hoard and do not cross as severely as some have illustrated.

I still believe that the Hoard might be useless to them junk. Buried to be retrieved later? Nope, buried to be hidden from scavengers. Can't burn it, not worth carting away... so, you bury it.

This is one of the things I don't understand Sean. The pieces in the Hoard work fine if crossed, and clearly do not work if vertical. And so you conclude, "Aha! the pieces are wrong because I know they should be vertical." This is very strange to me.

Besides if the Romans were essentially throwing away junk so it couldn't have been used by the enemy, it wouldn't have been packed in a box all neatly together, it would have been partially destroyed, smashed, etc. Then scattered and buried in a trash pit. You are really grasping at straws here. Do you know of any other cases were Roman trash is packaged in a stout wooden crate?

Look, the Romans made thousands and thousands of sets of segmentata armor. The vast majority have to have been made so that they would fit humans. (Note, humans do NOT have necks only 2in (5cm) wide.) But you would have us believe that the Romans, who have this vast experience with segmentatas, make several plates that are far too small to be worn by anyone. Then they compound their mistake by actually assembling these mis-shaped/undersized pieces into segmentatas. Then somehow, add stress and wear to the parts, which would not happen if they were just sitting in a box. And then of all the tens of thousands of sets manufactured, these are the ones we find. This is so logically implausible and statistically improbable that it does not pass the giggle test.

Do you really believe this? Since the Hoard pieces do work, the burden of proof is on you to prove that they do not, and that the evidence should be ignored. All fantasies about confusing future archaeologists aside, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. You have offered no proof or even evidence, merely claims of experience and an aesthetic preference for vertical plates.

While admire a some of the work you do, I am reluctantly coming to the conclusion that the segmentatas that you are making are artistic fantasy pieces.

I ask again how can someone so concerned about producing scutums that DO match the historical evidence, insist on producing segmentata that DO NOT match the historical evidence?