New article on the marching pack (T Edwards)

[Mithras]

I wholeheartedly agree with the premise that the marching pole has no cross bar. I've never seen it. Only a curved line.

Certainly food for thought, there.

[Mithras]

I can see all the photos. Maybe someone could post them here????

[Sean Manning]

I can see no images in Firefox, but all in IE. Of the two, I expect that Firefox is more standards-compliant ...

[gaiusseptimiuslucianus]

I'm able to view it in IE but not Firefox. Very interesting article, thanks for the link.

Lucianus

[scythius]

Great article - no piccies - I tried Firefox, IE Mozilla, and I dragged out one of my old QA machines from when I was a tester and Netscape gave no joy either.

[Paullus Scipio]

M. Demetrius/David wrote:-

I wonder if it would still have the hair on? Oiled hair-on skins are more water resistant than tanned leather with the hair off.

...as an aside, French Napoleonic Infantry back-packs were of 'hairy' cow-hide or goatskin, and were deemed more serviceable than British ones of painted canvas and sometimes tanned leather.......

The pictures come up fine for me on Internet explorer, and I find the arguments put forward in the article persuasive, save that if the theory about animal-skin waterbags is right, that's a lot of water !...and heavy!

[Magnus]

Can someone post the pictures? lol

[garrelt]

The German Tornister (back pack) model 1934 and 1939 , canvas with wooden frame, had a covering flap made of Horse skin with the hair left on it .
You might encounter some of these in a second world war museum.

Not showing the pictures in the LEGII Augusta site could be because Java is not installed.
At work with WinXp and java installed nothing wrong, at home Linux Fedora 8 no java installed no pictures.
I hope this answers the question about seeing and not seeing the pictures.

[Decimus Aurelius Varus]

Does anyone have any modern recreations of this goatskin bag as of yet? If so, would you be interested in explaining how it was constructed. I am interested in making one...

[garrelt]

If the bags in question are the bags as carried by many check the link below.
http://www.larp.com/legioxx/packs.html

[LUCIUS ALFENUS AVITIANUS]

, and I find the arguments put forward in the article persuasive, save that if the theory about animal-skin waterbags is right, that's a lot of water !...and heavy!

At Spain, these skins are used today i some villages. A medium sized goat (20 kilos alive) can contains almost 80 lits. I think is imposible to use in such way.

Probably are animal skins containing other things (clothes, a sagum, etc...)

[Hibernicus]

Paul, that packet will have patterns for loads of stuff.

HIbernicus

[afmayer]

Cesar Pocinya,
How much would the cost be today for a skin as you describe? Maybe if I get over there, I'll send one home (to the US), or find one in the US(?).

I have often wondered if the items we make are still being made in small countries or villages in the world. Might be the most effective way to research any item (its use and how it holds up to use) or buy the item.

It nice to see that the simple technology can be robust and still in use over the millenia and centuries. Plastic doesn't hold up as nicely.

Andy Mayer

[LUCIUS ALFENUS AVITIANUS]

I don't know.

Probably Aitor Iriarte can help, because there are traditional made in his country, Euskadi.

[Caballo]

Interesting article (btw, pics worked for me!).

Wouldn't the most sensible thing be to use the hasta or pilum as the carrying pole and loop all the kit onto that? I tried that at Colchester last year with my hasta carrying kit from the car, and it worked well.......
Didn't realise that I was doing research at the time- just seemed to be a sensible way of carrying the kit!

Cheers

caballo