lorica hamata real weight

[ROMan]

In fact I've handled antique mail that was very light with small thin links, all though the shirts were not very large or as old only perhaps 200 years and most likely of middle eastern origin, but if I said 2kg +/-would you believe me? ... would they have protected against a thrust from a gladius? I doubt it but perhaps a slash from a light sword or large knife ...
If Erik makes accurate links perhaps he has info on this and would be prepared to post on it, or perhaps John can post his weights and measures ;-)

I, too, have handled a lot of mail from Asia, the Kitchener collection here at the Royal Ontario Museum has a number of hauberks of mail acquired in the Sudan and India, the latter including significant Persian material. From the introduction of efficient personal guns the armour becomes much lighter and less rigorously made. The swords had traditionally focused on quality of edge rather than weight, and so mediaeval treatises on fighting will also talk about weapons such as the mace for armoured opponents. Contemporaneously to the lightening of the armour, the swords became more curved, more designed for a cut through flesh than for hacking through armour. Hence, as you say, for a weapon designed for the draw cut, quite thin, and even butted, mail will be quite effective. For the weight of Roman mail, given that examples of the armour itself is so rare while the weapons are relatively well evidenced. I would look at the weapons used against the armour for evidence of its weight.

This is not exactly relevant to this thread, but I once watched one of those videos that self-appointed "weapons experts" post on you-tube to talk about different weapon types. This one was on the pesh kabz, also known as a "Khyber knife". He was claiming that experimental archaeologists are idiots for hypothesizing how ancient weapons were used because the pesh kabz *looks* like a stabbing weapon, but 19th century British physicians who had to deal with the wounds created by them said they were used for slashing. The problem with this man's hypothesis is that it is based on one report made centuries after the weapon was devised, during a time when arms and armour were very different. Early pesh-kabz actually show widening of the tip to support piercing chain armour. That the type became popular, and then traditional, in Afghanistan, where it was used for slitting throats, really has nothing to do with the fact that this weapon was originally designed as an armour-piercing thrusting dagger.