06-16-2012, 04:03 PM
Hi
Faced with the ridicule of going out in public wearing a skirt, it must be an inbred Anglo-Saxon thing that as soon as there is a slight breeze there is an urge to put on trousers. After all Legionaries must have followed the local fashions and trousers and other garments in all sorts of interesting patterns and colours could be bought in the local shops because apparently traders outside Roman camps sold them. Failing that of course they could always loot them on campaign once they had tracked down the nearest convenient store. There are several flaws with this line of approach.
Firstly it seems to have been common Roman practice to wear more of everything first and soldiers were issued with regular supplies of clothing which they had to pay for. It was probably their single main expense. There is evidence at Vindolanda in the tablets for over-cloaks and under-cloaks. Does any re-enactor wear them or has anyone tried? Perhaps if they did and found they were unable to move swaddled in all these clothes it might be because as is so common amongst re-enactors that the garments are not the correct size or weight. I guess this is because really accurate clothing today would be just as expensive if not more so than the armour and after all a chap wants to spend his cash on the exciting shiny pointy stuff, which is great until that breeze comes along! Then its down to the shops presumably for those trousers!
Secondly it is somewhat ironic to discover that the sophisticated Romans basically produced very simple clothes. Usually just uncut garments made out of rectangular pieces of wool material. It was the barbarians who actually produced tailored garments like trousers. These garments are not something which could be simply made up from an old cloak by the average legionary much less his modern counterpart. The same would apparently go for the Germanic long sleeved tunics because it seems re-enactors consistently fail to achieve the narrow tight fitting sleeves these garments had with the very narrow cuffs. These are always shown in Roman art and in the archaeological finds. Equally the trousers are very tight fitting. Make a mistake with those and a chap will have something more to complain about than the cold. Not a good idea. The simple solution again would be the Roman way. Cut up the old tunic and make them into leg wrappings or bindings. Again simple shapes.
Thirdly what was local clothing? If you go by Roman sources literature and art, not much and I mean not much. Barbarians are frequently depicted nude or just wearing a cape. But then again according to one Roman writer the natives in Caledonia wore nothing and spent most of their time underwater which was one convincing explanation for why the Roman could not find them much less politely borrow their clothes. However we should remember that even as recently as three hundred years ago natives in the far North of Britain wore nothing more than a blanket wrapped around themselves with some lower leg covering. Of course their life expectancy might not have been great and neither will the average re-enactors be if they wear that sort of thing everyday in all weathers.
So I suppose we come back to the old argument of how accurate do you want to be. I can only say that on the only time I wore a reasonably accurate wool paenula in action so to speak, I was far warmer than my comrades who were wearing inaccurate sagum cloaks, they were not large enough and could barely wrap their material around themselves. So being as accurate as possible sometimes has it's advantages over looking reasonably correct.
For once this is not all guesswork, the evidence is there. Nonetheless I will disappear behind my cloaking device to avoid being called a nit picker.
Finally a P.S
I was reminded by Claire's earlier post about the possibility that the trousers she had worked on could actually have been female maternity wear! It is equally likely that local patterned clothing (tartans) belonged to women. The Huldremose dress was patterned this way but the Thorsberg tunic was not, it was plain red by modern accounts. The trousers too were an un-dyed colour. So you could be faced with the possibility of being mocked by the modern public for wearing a skirt and equally laughed at if you went back in time by the ancients for dressing like a woman.
Trousers too seem absent from the later Pictish Aberlemno warriors, even their cavalry, although one Pictish crossbowman apparently does have a cloak which had a chequerboard pattern. It was used as a crafty form of camouflage according to Phil Barker, but what the pattern was based on is not clear, presumably that tiny fragment from Falkirk but who owned that originally or from what type of garment it came from if any, is open to debate.
Graham.
Faced with the ridicule of going out in public wearing a skirt, it must be an inbred Anglo-Saxon thing that as soon as there is a slight breeze there is an urge to put on trousers. After all Legionaries must have followed the local fashions and trousers and other garments in all sorts of interesting patterns and colours could be bought in the local shops because apparently traders outside Roman camps sold them. Failing that of course they could always loot them on campaign once they had tracked down the nearest convenient store. There are several flaws with this line of approach.
Firstly it seems to have been common Roman practice to wear more of everything first and soldiers were issued with regular supplies of clothing which they had to pay for. It was probably their single main expense. There is evidence at Vindolanda in the tablets for over-cloaks and under-cloaks. Does any re-enactor wear them or has anyone tried? Perhaps if they did and found they were unable to move swaddled in all these clothes it might be because as is so common amongst re-enactors that the garments are not the correct size or weight. I guess this is because really accurate clothing today would be just as expensive if not more so than the armour and after all a chap wants to spend his cash on the exciting shiny pointy stuff, which is great until that breeze comes along! Then its down to the shops presumably for those trousers!
Secondly it is somewhat ironic to discover that the sophisticated Romans basically produced very simple clothes. Usually just uncut garments made out of rectangular pieces of wool material. It was the barbarians who actually produced tailored garments like trousers. These garments are not something which could be simply made up from an old cloak by the average legionary much less his modern counterpart. The same would apparently go for the Germanic long sleeved tunics because it seems re-enactors consistently fail to achieve the narrow tight fitting sleeves these garments had with the very narrow cuffs. These are always shown in Roman art and in the archaeological finds. Equally the trousers are very tight fitting. Make a mistake with those and a chap will have something more to complain about than the cold. Not a good idea. The simple solution again would be the Roman way. Cut up the old tunic and make them into leg wrappings or bindings. Again simple shapes.
Thirdly what was local clothing? If you go by Roman sources literature and art, not much and I mean not much. Barbarians are frequently depicted nude or just wearing a cape. But then again according to one Roman writer the natives in Caledonia wore nothing and spent most of their time underwater which was one convincing explanation for why the Roman could not find them much less politely borrow their clothes. However we should remember that even as recently as three hundred years ago natives in the far North of Britain wore nothing more than a blanket wrapped around themselves with some lower leg covering. Of course their life expectancy might not have been great and neither will the average re-enactors be if they wear that sort of thing everyday in all weathers.
So I suppose we come back to the old argument of how accurate do you want to be. I can only say that on the only time I wore a reasonably accurate wool paenula in action so to speak, I was far warmer than my comrades who were wearing inaccurate sagum cloaks, they were not large enough and could barely wrap their material around themselves. So being as accurate as possible sometimes has it's advantages over looking reasonably correct.
For once this is not all guesswork, the evidence is there. Nonetheless I will disappear behind my cloaking device to avoid being called a nit picker.
Finally a P.S
I was reminded by Claire's earlier post about the possibility that the trousers she had worked on could actually have been female maternity wear! It is equally likely that local patterned clothing (tartans) belonged to women. The Huldremose dress was patterned this way but the Thorsberg tunic was not, it was plain red by modern accounts. The trousers too were an un-dyed colour. So you could be faced with the possibility of being mocked by the modern public for wearing a skirt and equally laughed at if you went back in time by the ancients for dressing like a woman.
Trousers too seem absent from the later Pictish Aberlemno warriors, even their cavalry, although one Pictish crossbowman apparently does have a cloak which had a chequerboard pattern. It was used as a crafty form of camouflage according to Phil Barker, but what the pattern was based on is not clear, presumably that tiny fragment from Falkirk but who owned that originally or from what type of garment it came from if any, is open to debate.
Graham.
"Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream" Edgar Allan Poe.
"Every brush-stroke is torn from my body" The Rebel, Tony Hancock.
"..I sweated in that damn dirty armor....TWENTY YEARS!', Charlton Heston, The Warlord.
"Every brush-stroke is torn from my body" The Rebel, Tony Hancock.
"..I sweated in that damn dirty armor....TWENTY YEARS!', Charlton Heston, The Warlord.
