H.R.Robinson Helmet Typology

[Caratacus]

Also (more ignorance and referrals to sources happily accepted) were there mechanical means of helmet production at any stage of the periods to be covered? I mean, were all helmet forms (not decoration) manually beaten, were some stamped/pressed from hot sheet metal, were any spun?

It depends on the metal from which the helmet was made. Montefortino helmets could be cast (bronze) and then worked on afterwards as to, for example, decorations and also the 'knocking back' of the rims to thicken them. The Coolus type of helmet - sheet bronze - seems to have been spun (in some cases the circular spin marks can be seen) as well as formed by being hammered over a former of some sort (possibly a suitably shaped wooden block - like those my mother used to use for making hats!) Iron as a metal isn't soft enough to be worked in this way (by spinning), so the Imperial series of helmets would have been made by hammering over a former.

Are there texts, or any sources, that examine roman helmet manufacture particularly?

I don't know of anything that examines this question as such, but there are volumes devoted to helmets (such as the famous H R Robinson one, and also the Junkelmann series on the Guttmann collection and Angelo Bottini's monumental work - of which he was the editor - on ancient helmets, published by RGZM at Mainz) that include mentiion of the methods of helmet manufacture.

The attempt to make now a clasification is thus forced, just to follow an our own exigence of modern men, and therefore it will be always hard and never accurately. Often we will have difiiculties to put into it an helmet or another.

Well, if we don't try, we are loosing out on a lot of fun, for one thing! Of course (to be serious) all such classifications are forced to a degree. The Romans had no idea that they were making a Dr.37 bowl - but they were making something with a distinctive shape that they recognised because we find tiles scratched with a roster of the number of pots of a particular shape that were fired together in the kilm (the potters often worked together as sort of cummunes - firing thousands of vessels at one go, so they had to have some way of identifying who had made what).

Things such as pottery vessels were made in certain shapes, as were other things such as brooches, belt plates, glass vessels, etc. etc. Helmets were no exception. New designs were tried out and were probably circularised throughout the army. I have records of the service postings of centurions that show some of them had served in as many as 15 different legions - that's half the Roman Army! Why? I suspect that some of these characters at least were moving around the army, disseminating information on tactics and possibly equipment. New types of helmet (e.g. with the two iron cross-braces over the crown) may have been included in this. The fact remains that - even though our designations may be at fault - the Romans (and other civilisations before and after them) made things in certain ways and with recognisable characteristics. In establishing a typology all we are doing is identifying what these were.

Caratacus
(Mike Thomas)