Goth armour

[Alanus]

Hello Moi & Evan,

You have it correctly. Scale armor was sewn with either sinew or rawhide lacing to a leather backing. Whereas lamellar was self-sustained and had no leather backing. As to when exactly lamellar showed up in Europe, not necessarily within the Roman army? I don't think we can pinpoint it. Since lamellar is Eastern, it probably showed up with the first Eastern tribes to arrive in the Kuban and Crimea... which I would imagine were the Sirices, Aorsi, and Roxolani. It isn't shown on Trajan's column. But Simonenko notes that Roman artistic convention only showed scale armor, and it is shown in a very stylistic manner (not accurately). Lamellar was part of what he calls Sarmatian "combination armor," which also included scale and mail, all of it worn by an individual who could afford it. Sometime, I'll post a photo of my combination armor, but it requires a helper for me to get into it.