10-25-2009, 02:58 PM
Yeah, that one's news to me- silver sheet on segmentata plates? How can you not reference that one?! 
hock:
Overall, it doesn't seem to me that generally associated pieces, such as were described, would serve as particularly good evidence- a nice breast or upper shoulder guard plate with its associated hinges and buckles or some other such clear segmentata element would seem to be pretty necessary to clinch it; the debate over the liklihood would probably be endless (and not terribly productive LOL) since there are plausible reasons for both cases. That statue hardly has 'Mars' marked on it I think, so it could be anyone and anyway it's just art- putting Mars in commonly-seen (on monuments) armour is not unreasonable- but indeed copper alloy was actual money, so would someone who could afford it want a less-ornate type of armour? But then helmets were still made of copper alloy through the early 1st century CE, and they're not exactly a small amount of metal either... it goes on.
Plus it may be a mistake to bring brass vs. bronze in as well- who knows if the report is using the unfortunately general term 'bronze' when they haven't actually done a metalurgical analysis to show it really is. Anyway, it's the tin that makes bronze so expensive relativly- iron is the second most abundant metal on Earth, and there's 34x more zinc than tin (abundance in Earth's crust Fe/Zn/Cu/Sn = 41000/75/50/2.2 ppm, respectively- [url:33n7zc42]http://environmentalchemistry.com/yogi/periodic/Fe.html#Who[/url]), so bronze will always be worth more than brass.
hock: Overall, it doesn't seem to me that generally associated pieces, such as were described, would serve as particularly good evidence- a nice breast or upper shoulder guard plate with its associated hinges and buckles or some other such clear segmentata element would seem to be pretty necessary to clinch it; the debate over the liklihood would probably be endless (and not terribly productive LOL) since there are plausible reasons for both cases. That statue hardly has 'Mars' marked on it I think, so it could be anyone and anyway it's just art- putting Mars in commonly-seen (on monuments) armour is not unreasonable- but indeed copper alloy was actual money, so would someone who could afford it want a less-ornate type of armour? But then helmets were still made of copper alloy through the early 1st century CE, and they're not exactly a small amount of metal either... it goes on.
Plus it may be a mistake to bring brass vs. bronze in as well- who knows if the report is using the unfortunately general term 'bronze' when they haven't actually done a metalurgical analysis to show it really is. Anyway, it's the tin that makes bronze so expensive relativly- iron is the second most abundant metal on Earth, and there's 34x more zinc than tin (abundance in Earth's crust Fe/Zn/Cu/Sn = 41000/75/50/2.2 ppm, respectively- [url:33n7zc42]http://environmentalchemistry.com/yogi/periodic/Fe.html#Who[/url]), so bronze will always be worth more than brass.
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