11-28-2004, 10:56 AM
Your first point of access should be Yigael Yadin's excavations. He ran the digs on Masada and En Gedi. The En Gedi finds (variously known under En Gedi, Cave of Letters or Nahal Hever), include significant amounts of (well-published) clothing and textiles as well as other domestic articles (leather, basketry, woodwork, pottery and bronze). Masada is less useful for that field, but some military supplies also survive. IIRC there were also excavations at Machaerus and Herodion, but I don't recall any details.<br>
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Arms and armour are harder than you might think, it seems. The Roman troops in the East are very similar to the western ones, though you usually see more scale and mail than segmentata in reconstructions. The units involved in the fighting were mostly drawn from Syria and Egypt, though IIRC the X Fretensis (by far and wide the most popular Eastern legion for some reason) was not in the area prior to the war. For the local frces, we can assume a good deal of Hellenistic equipment still floating around. Some reconstructions draw on Palmyrene and Petran reliefs showing thorax-style lamellar armours and various Greek helmet shapes. I suspect many local auxiliaries (especially the Ituraeans that Josephus tells such horror stories about) looked a good deal more barbaric than this, though.<br>
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Yigael Yadin assumes that the Jewish insurgents used mostly bows and believes they had very little arms and armour of any kind, but I'd expect a good deal of older equipment to have survived from the pre-Herodian 'troubles' and Herod's regional power aspirations. We know that in Roman Egypt, a good deal of policing manpower was drawn from local militias, and something similar may well have existed in Judaea (all the neighbouring auxiliaries must have come from somewhere, for one thing). I haven't looked into later archelology yet, though. Something is liable to have come up. They're digging up Israel like few other areas on earth.<br>
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It's a real pity Peter Connolly's 'The Holy Land' doesn't come with a bibliography. It is certainly the best and most accessible introduction to the period from a re-enactor's point of view. <p></p><i></i>
<br>
Arms and armour are harder than you might think, it seems. The Roman troops in the East are very similar to the western ones, though you usually see more scale and mail than segmentata in reconstructions. The units involved in the fighting were mostly drawn from Syria and Egypt, though IIRC the X Fretensis (by far and wide the most popular Eastern legion for some reason) was not in the area prior to the war. For the local frces, we can assume a good deal of Hellenistic equipment still floating around. Some reconstructions draw on Palmyrene and Petran reliefs showing thorax-style lamellar armours and various Greek helmet shapes. I suspect many local auxiliaries (especially the Ituraeans that Josephus tells such horror stories about) looked a good deal more barbaric than this, though.<br>
<br>
Yigael Yadin assumes that the Jewish insurgents used mostly bows and believes they had very little arms and armour of any kind, but I'd expect a good deal of older equipment to have survived from the pre-Herodian 'troubles' and Herod's regional power aspirations. We know that in Roman Egypt, a good deal of policing manpower was drawn from local militias, and something similar may well have existed in Judaea (all the neighbouring auxiliaries must have come from somewhere, for one thing). I haven't looked into later archelology yet, though. Something is liable to have come up. They're digging up Israel like few other areas on earth.<br>
<br>
It's a real pity Peter Connolly's 'The Holy Land' doesn't come with a bibliography. It is certainly the best and most accessible introduction to the period from a re-enactor's point of view. <p></p><i></i>
Der Kessel ist voll Bärks!
Volker Bach
Volker Bach
