10-21-2006, 11:34 AM
The other thing that needs to be remembered is that, in the ancient world, metal was valuable. It took a great deal of effort to mine the ore and then to extract the metal from it. So much so that the winning of metals was an Imperial monopoly (hence the stamping of lead 'pigs' from Britain with the emperor's name). After any battle, the battlefield would be 'policed' by the winners, looking for any metal objects they could gather up. This would obviously include any weapons, but also armour, helmets, etc. Even today, you won't find very much on modern battlefields and I know the Somme area very well, so can vouch for this. All I've ever seen are a few strands of barbed wire and the screw posts for this. Of course, unexploded shells turn up there all the time but that's not something the ancients would have had a problem with!
Brass, in particular (from which the fitments of lorica segmentata armour were made) is particularly difficult to make, as it requires a batch process that depends for its success on exact control of temperature for the various stages. Bronze objects were easier to make (because the two metals, copper and tin, could be obtained separately). For brass, however, you need zinc and the Romans were incapable of producing this metal as such, as it's extraction requires a temperature that the Romans could not have achieved with their level of technology. The Romans called this alloy 'oricalcum' and used it for money. As (I think) Mike Bishop said in his book on the armour, the fitments for lorica segmentata were actually made from bullion!
The site at Kalkriese, vast though it is, has yielded very little in the way of metal objects. Paradoxically, one of the best preserved items that came from there was the upper chest plate of a set of lorica segmentata armour, which for once told us something about the early form of this stuff.
One of the other things that the excavators have found, however, answers (at least in part) the original question about human remains. They did find the mass graves that were filled by the troops under Germanicus in the punitive expedition following Varus' defeat. The bones were not in very good condition, but they were there. They had been buried beneath animal bones, presumably to prevent the human remains from being disturbed by scavenging animals, such as wolves and boar.
Dr. Mike Thomas
(Caratacus)
Brass, in particular (from which the fitments of lorica segmentata armour were made) is particularly difficult to make, as it requires a batch process that depends for its success on exact control of temperature for the various stages. Bronze objects were easier to make (because the two metals, copper and tin, could be obtained separately). For brass, however, you need zinc and the Romans were incapable of producing this metal as such, as it's extraction requires a temperature that the Romans could not have achieved with their level of technology. The Romans called this alloy 'oricalcum' and used it for money. As (I think) Mike Bishop said in his book on the armour, the fitments for lorica segmentata were actually made from bullion!
The site at Kalkriese, vast though it is, has yielded very little in the way of metal objects. Paradoxically, one of the best preserved items that came from there was the upper chest plate of a set of lorica segmentata armour, which for once told us something about the early form of this stuff.
One of the other things that the excavators have found, however, answers (at least in part) the original question about human remains. They did find the mass graves that were filled by the troops under Germanicus in the punitive expedition following Varus' defeat. The bones were not in very good condition, but they were there. They had been buried beneath animal bones, presumably to prevent the human remains from being disturbed by scavenging animals, such as wolves and boar.
Dr. Mike Thomas
(Caratacus)
visne scire quod credam? credo orbes volantes exstare.
