H.R.Robinson Helmet Typology

[Caratacus]

Weeee! There are just so many questions/posts since my last of just yesterday evening that I don't know where to start! At least this has got people fired up and talking about this instead of moaning about the drawbacks of HRR's work. So, not in any particular order ....

Yes, it may be correct to regard anything before GIC as being 'Italian', rather than 'Roman' (actually, I think we need to go back before that to the 'Social War' at the time of Sulla, when there was a real question as to who was Roman and who was not). However, what we are talking about here is a continuous period of historical development as the Roman state expanded and eventually came to control the whole of Europe (up to the Rhine/Danube frontier, anyway). Does it matter too much what we call it? OK, maybe we are going to disagree on that - but it doesn't help in trying to construct a typology for these helmets, IMO.

I like the categorisation advanced by Jens Horstkotte above. It retains a lot of things that are good and can probably be regarded as being generally accepted. He's right, however, that the problem is the Weisenau-Mainz helmets group. It also needs to be remembered that this is a relatively small group, as compared with the Montefortino types, for example. Excluding those in private hands that I don't know about, I've got information on only some 40 helmets from this grouping. So, have we got all the variants here?

Any typology based on just physical appearance is foolish, and overlooks important factors.

Well, we're not going to agree on this one either! It's a bit of a circular arguement. If I plonked a helmet down in front of you and told you nothing about where it came from, or whether there was any evidence found with it that allowed you to date it (even approximately), what would you do? To answer my own question, I assume that you would compare it with other helmets as to its physical characteristics. This is probably the situation with the majority of helmets. A look through Junkelmann's work on the Guttmann collection shows that he is assigning dates on the basis of style, because in most of these cases there is no other dating evidence and no information as to where the helmet has come from. As to overlooking "other important factors", I have to ask what these might be - and would they obtain for every helmet that we encounter? If they are of universal importance, then of course we should consider these and incorporate them into our categorisation/typology system.

A real problem is perhaps that most of us don't have a copy of Robinson's opus to inspect. If the intention of the thread is to go "Beyond Robinson", then a lot of participants (me, for example!) are at a disadvantage.

(3) Given (2), does anyone know whether Robinson's book is available as an e-book?

Not so far as I know (shame - crying out for a reprint at the very least). I believe that Mike Bishop mentioned that there are copyright issues with HRR's family when we were looking at using the photographic material from the book? You will find the HRR classification criteria in RAT - I teased this out around 18 months ago and Jasper put it somewhere here. :oops:

I guess the point here is that we should not fall into the trap of basing a typology purely on superficial appearance ( e.g. lumping together Monefortino and Coolus 'D' types), but as R-R recognised, also take into account construction methods/metal-working traditions/cultural origins of the helmet as well.

By all means! But superficial appearance is usually all we have to go on. You try and get a museum to open its display cases and let you have a play with the contents! The same is true for such things as the thickness of the metal (which may or may not have relevance). To obtain this information you have to be able to handle the item and curators are very, very chary about letting this degree of handling go on (with good reason - the damn things are around 2,000 years old!) I don't doubt that the characteristics underlined in the above quote are interesting and informative but are they available?

... despite similarities in appearance and the 'cross-over' of characteristics, it is possible ( I believe ) to distinguish the two. Do you have a particular example/examples in mind where it is difficult to decide one way or another?

Well, it's this 'cross-over of characteristics' that is the problem, I feel. If it walks like a dog and barks like a dog, it probably is a dog! The Montefortino E type, (p.22) have (for the 3 examples he quotes - not a large group upon which to base a conclusion) all the characteristics of Coolus D/E types, including the reinforcing brow guards being either solid or L-shaped. He even says that the crest knob on one example is made of a softer alloy which is then 'worked into the bowl' - i.e. it isn't integral. I'm looking at the two pictures now, and I'm damned if I can see any real difference between the two types (Coolus E on p.32). Given that (as has been said) these things were made individually by craftsmen, there are bound to be minor differences as to shape. To my way of thinking, a Montefortino should have a very bulbous, even conical form. These later divisions of HRR of this type look like versions of the "Jockey-cap" shape to me!

Enough, already! Time for tea and toast!

Caratacus
(MIke Thomas)

[marcos]

A suggestion ; sometime to file pictures of ancient weapons I use a
2-1-2 code, to remeber as informations a possible.
According all previous posts, and adapting that code, it could sounds like this:

There are 5 fields to describe and classify all the peculiarity of the helmet, and these must be of course easy understandable.

First 2 fields: explaining period and belonging
Early Italic (EI) – Late Italic (LI) – Early Roman (ER) – Medium Roman (MR) – Late Roman (LR )

Third filed : relating to the army corps
Infantry (I) – Cavalry (C) – Parade and sports (P) – Unknown (U)

Last 2 fields: a numeric code explaining some peculiarities of the helmet and the material it is from
1,2,3 … and Bronze (B) - Steel (S) - Mixed (M)

An example :

below helmet could be ER-i-2B



and namely it means
Early period, Roman - Infantry - type 2 , made from bronze

May be it doesn't sound lovely as "Coolus" or "mannheim", but from that we can have much more informations and to file almost all types of helmets.
Furthermore , we don't have more the incongruence of calling a type with the name of the find spot of the first exemplar. In fact , why to call Montefortino an helmet found in Sicily either in Apulia ?

[Peroni]

below helmet could be ER-i-2B

To be 'devil's advocate' (forgetting for now that most of us are familiar with this helmet as Berhamstead helmet.)

Would that be the ER-i-2B from Nijmegen, London#1 or London#2 possibly elsewhere? You could get a lot of repeated codes for helmets of the same type from various locations.

for example the ER-i-2B from Walbrook has feather tubes :wink:

[Tarbicus]

How about an additional field denoting location?

E.g.;

Br - Berhamstead
Mz - Mainz
etc, etc.

When a new one pops up from the ground of a new location simply add a new code to the list.

I'd also try to keep the Robinson names in there - but that's a personal opinion:

ER-i-2C-Br

'C' stands for 'coolus'.

[marcos]

well, of course that is not a univocal code for each knew helmets, and thus we can have two or more helmets with the same identification , at any rate as actual Robinson cataloguing, or whatever other classification.
Very important is the list of the numeric codes (IV field) on which must be worked.

Additional field denoting find spot may be interesting , but personally I don't think it is right to link to it , because is a too much fortuitos circumstance. For me , that is also a limitation of Robinson cataloguing.

[caiusbeerquitius]

Third filed : relating to the army corps
Infantry (I) – Cavalry © – Parade and sports (P) – Unknown (U)

I would leave this away. Especially "Parade and sports". This could be among "cavalry", in case this field is deemed necessary. It is far from sure that the items called "parade / sports armour" were used exclusivly for this purpose, in fact more and more evidence comes up showing that these armours were used as regular armour as well.

[marcos]

may be right regarding "parade and sports" , but Infantry or Cavalry is an important peculiarity.

[jho]

Salvete,

First of all laudes to Jasper for resurrecting the forum and letting us continue this interesting discussion. I think that we are actually having three discussions in this thread at the same time which we may want to treat separately:

• the criteria on which any helmet typology should be based,

• what types and subtypes we would get applying such criteria, and

• what to call such types and subtypes?

With respect to the first issue, I do not believe that it will be possible to come up with a list of defined characteristics which will be applicable to ALL sorts of helmets. Rather I believe that the differentiation into the following main types:

(1) Montefortino and/or Jockey-cap Helmets

(2) Pseudo-Attic ("Cavalry") helmets

(3) Weisenau or "Imperial" helmets

(4) Masked Helmets

(5) Ridge Helmets

(6) Spangenhelme,

which is based on a mix of criteria, is sound and needs no revision, except that we have not yet catered for a small group of conical helmets traditionally associated with Roman archers:

• Dahovo, Bosnia - HRR, The Armour of Imperial Rome, Hoffiller, V. 1910-11: 'Oprema rimskoga vojnika u prvo doba carstva', Vjestnik Hrvatskoga Arheoloskoga Drustva (Zagreb) n.s. 11, 145-240 (p. 27) - Conical, bronze, 90 degree step about 2/3 to the back of the helmet, holes for aventail, cheekpieces inside the helmet (?), relief of Roman gods on the brow band, pearl strip edging
  
  Intercisa, Hungary - Szabo 1986, 'Le casque romain d'Intercisa - recente trouvaille du Danube', Studien zu den Militärgrenzen Roms III, 421 - Conical, bronze, holes for aventail, on both sides two extra holes above the holes for the aventail, one above the other, for cheekpieces or strip, no decoration
  
  Karaagach, Bulgaria - Velkov, I. 1928-29: 'Neue Grabhügel aus Bulgarien', Bulletin de l'Institut d'Archéologie Bulgare 5, 13-55
  
  Bumbesti, Romania - Petculescu, L. and Gheorghe, P. 1979: 'Coiful roman de la Bumbesti', Studii si Cervetari de Istorie Veche 30, 603-6
  
  Breda - Bredase Akkers, 4000 jaar bewoningsgeschiedenis op de rand van zand en klei. C.W. Koot, R. Berkvens. RAM102 Breda 2004. ISBN: 90-5799-056-3 - conical, iron, constructed from 8 triangular plates riveted together, extra brow band (?) with holes for an aventail/lining (?), no decoration, dated by pottery to late 2nd/3rd century

which we may want to treat as a separate seventh (or eighth if you treat Montefortino and Jockey Cap as separate groups) group.

Therefore, I believe that we should treat each of those groups separately when trying to define criteria for subgroups within those groups.

But before we define such criteria, we may want to review whether it makes sense to define subgroups at all. After all, as has been said, any typology is just an instrument ultimately designed to draw conclusions with respect to dating or geographic, social or cultural context of the item.

To illustrate my point and to induce further discussion, I have made (rather crude) line drawings of some 50 plus Weisenau/Imperial helmets (which is far from including every known helmet of that type) and attempted to group them basically based on general form of the helmet bowl. The result is the following:

[url:1q1oscll]http://picasaweb.google.com/jho655/WeisenauHelmets?feat=directlink[/url]

In the document, the lines denote the general distinction between "Italic", "Gallic" and Guttmann or "Attic" types and the red areas clusters which may form potential subgroups. Many different subgroupings based on things like crest attachment, form of eyebrows etc. would be possible and everybody is invited to do his own grouping.

HOWEVER, the green circles denote helmets with a secure contextual dating in the Augustan period (note that I have not checked the dating on all helmets so there may be many more helmets from the Augustan period not so marked), i.e. all of these helmets are broadly contemporary. Now, what does that show us? It appears to show us that more or less ALL potential subtypes of Imperial Gallic helmets (large or small neck guard, flat or sloping neck guard, simple or full eyebrows etc.) were already present in the Augustan period and therefore any subgrouping based on those criteria is unlikely to produce much in terms of chronological information.

Finally, to also address the issue of what we call the babies, I am a strong proponent of the continental find spot based system. Why? Because I believe that it best fits the way that the human brain works (anybody who has ever seen the helmet from Niedermoenter will immediately know what a "Niedermoenter type helmet" looks like, but try to imagine an "ER-i-2B"). Secondly, I am a strong opponent of any system that would include assumptions with respect to dating or function. One of the problems of HRR's system is exactly that many of his "cavalry" helmets are now presumed to have been infantry helmets and many of his "sports" helmets may have actually been worn in combat. We still know very little in terms of function and chronology of helmets and the total number of known helmets, although vastly larger than at HRR's time, is still small. It has e.g. not unreasonably been claimed that both the Weisenau/Imperial and Hagenau/Coolus may have started their professional careers as cavalry helmets! Therefore any naming system should avoid including information which may make it obsolete with the very next find. Thirdly I am a strong opponent of any system that would involve numbers or letters, firstly for the reasons stated above and secondly because it would force us to give a number to every find whereas a find-spot based system will allow us to identify subgroups where possible (e.g. Weisenau-Niedermoenter) but leaves the option to bunch all of those helmets which may not (yet) fit into any specific subgroup together simply as "Weisenau" helmets.

Apologies for the long post but I find this thread extremely interesting.

[Westr70]

I find this discussion to be very interesting. Most artifact typologies start with region, material, form, and then size. I’m working on a prehistoric bead collection from southern California and this is the way the typology is organized. I use this because it illustrates the thought process and it happens to what I’m doing at the moment.
Region: California
1. Material
A. Stone
Five subcategories
B. Shell
13 subcategories.
C. Bone
D. Other materials
2. Bead Shape
10 subcategories
3. Hole shape
Five subcategories
4. Dimensions
Three subcategories
5. Other modifications of Beads

Using this typology you can date prehistoric beads, in southern California, to within several hundred years down to a dozen years. The occurrence of specific types in sites and strata can then be used to place beads (helmets) in their proper chronological order. As mentioned elsewhere in this forum, typologies are meant to expand and be refined.

One of the members asked how we could get the archaeologists to accept this typology? All you have to do is use your own system. If it makes sense other people will adopt it and test it. You have something most archaeologists don’t have, you have a group with a great deal of passion and interest and even better a geographic spread any university would be proud of. The only thing against you is that helmets are few and far between and many don’t have good contextual associations for dating. I can guarantee one thing, is that if you get a good system of measuring the helmets and a standardized way of describing them, you will have gone a long way to creating a solid beginning.

You have some great line drawings of these helmets. All of you interested, should describe the pieces or shapes, then outline what measurements should be taken and how. Then come up with a standardized language for description and measurement. Create a research proposal and present it to friends/people who would let you have access to their collections. Then describe and measure. That alone would make you valuable to the archaeological community. The more you describe and measure the greater the mandate you have when it comes to access the museums.

[drsrob]

Hai people!

I've been absent for a long time for several reasons, one being that I'm now working on my other interest: Dutch uniforms of the 19th century.

I noticed this threat however, because it's a subject on which I have pondered a lot in the previous time. This started with a discussion I had with a former member on the Imperial Italic type D.

As a result of this I deviced my own typology, on which I composed an article, that has remained unpublished. To quote from the start:

It is logical than that especially helmets have been extensively researched and typified. Two basic systems have found acceptance. Most continental researchers use a site nomenclature while the English speaking world follows the system developed by the late H. Russell Robinson. This system aims at classing the helmets into families, each family including helmets made according to a common pattern, showing it's development through time. So he extended the line of Montefortino and Coolus pattern helmets into imperial times and defined the Imperial Gallic helmet as a pattern derived from the Gallic Agen and Port helmets.
Unfortunately he is also guilty of inconsistency. While the legionary helmets were classed according to origin and put in chronological order, he grouped the auxiliary helmets according to use. This he did probably because he didn't fully understood the development of cavalry and cavalry sports helmets.
The problem with this is that once his conclusions with respect to use are questioned, the system fell apart. The 3rd century helmets he classed as cavalry are now considered to have been used by infantry as well (if not exclusively so).

In the article I argue that Robinson's Imperial Gallic, Imperial Italic and Auxiliary Cavalry are, with a few exceptions, all manifestations from a single basic pattern. For this pattern I deviced a new encompassing name: "Principal Infantry Helm", wherein "principal" has the dual meaning of "main" and "from the principate".

[Peroni]

Big BUMP! :mrgreen:

[Caratacus]

Question: Did HRR devise a system where he grouped the helmets by their supposed use, and then defined the characteristics of the helmets within that group, or did he do it the other way round, i.e. look for common characteristics and then try and work out what the group may have been used for?

In some respects, I suppose, it doesn't really matter whether a helmet was a 'sport/parade' helmet or a cavalry (i.e. combat) helmet, provided that there are clearly defined elements in the design that can be agreed on.

You can replace the 'find spot' by a simple type number if you want. These are not that difficult to work with if you are familiar with the system. The point to remember is that these typologies are not designed with the "man on the top deck of the Clapham omnibus" in mind! They are specialist tools. As an example, we use a mnemonic system to describe the ovolo friezes on certain types of samian pottery vessels, so you get things like: "2PPRRAFP". Doesn't mean a thing to you does it? But you're not an expert in samian pottery! To me it means that the ovolo frieze has a double border (2), which is plain (P), a plain tongue (P), which is on the right side ®, a right hand tip ®, which is applied (A) and is four pronged (FP)! Granted, it doesn't exactly trip off the tongue in the way that "Coolus" would - but it does work.

My objection to the 'find spot' sytem remains, it's clumsy, it is inflexible and is lacking in clarity.

Caratacus
(Dr Mike Thomas)

[Peroni]

Presumably a system of find spot such as basic Weisenau Type1,a,xxx would be OK though if you use certain factors as basic shaping and decoration type such as eyebrows, and possibly neck guard shape etc (without falling into the HRR trap of a development of typology) But I agree, you could get very bogged down in specific find sites such as;

Mainz Type 1a (ie. what we now call the Gallic G)
Aquilea Type 1b (not in HRR but for all intents and purposes another Gallic G)
ad nauseum.

We also have other helmets from Mainz such as the Aux B (Mainz Type 3A?) and the Italic D.(Mainz type 2A?)

To me, the Gallic F - H of HRR could all be the same helmet type, as they are all basically the same type of helmet with small variations of detail.

However - when we discuss the HRR Italic H - we all know it as the 'Niedermoermter'! And Late Roman helmets as Intercisa I, II, IV - Berkasovo I, II etc which seems to work!

But... Then we have all the helmets that have no proveneance that are in private hands, that can only possibly give you the country where it came from at most. These would not fit into a place name typology.

Bloody difficult! :?

[caiusbeerquitius]

My objection to the 'find spot' sytem remains, it's clumsy, it is inflexible and is lacking in clarity.

IMO that´s the case for both sytems. Can´t we come up with something... completely different?

[Caratacus]

Can´t we come up with something... completely different?

Monty Python? (Sorry - couldn't resist)

Well, yes, I suppose we could! The problem isn't coming up with a new and different system - the problem is agreeing what that system should be.

Let's see (as a starting point only) - (a) Leave out the place names as identifiers, (b) leave out unnecessary sub-groups which show only minor variations, © leave out anything which cannot be verified by looking at the thing (by this I mean if we don't know for certain that it's an infantry helmet, it should not be classified using this term), (d) omit anything based on dates (which cannot often be verified beyond doubt), (e) omit anything requiring a value judgement, 'larger than', 'more than' and so on. So, it might (basing this on the ovolo mnemonic I mentioned above) look something like this :-

(1) What's it made of?: Cu Fe or U (copper, iron or unknown)
(2) What shape is the bowl? B (bulbous), C (conical), H (hemispherical), S (segmented), U (unknown, if damaged - there is likely to be a fair number of 'U' in this)
(3) Is the bowl decorated in any way? Y, N, U
(4) Neck guard (i.e. is there one?): Y, N, U
(5) Neck guard orientation: H (horizontal), S (sloped), N (none)
(6) Brow guard: Y, N, U
(7) Brow guard orientation: H, S, N, U
(8) Are there 'eyebrows'?: Y, N
(9) Crest knob: Y, N
(10) Crest knob decoration? Y, N, U
(11) Is there a face mask? Y, N
(12) Is there ear protection? Y, N
(13) Is it (ear protection) integral to the helmet bowl, or is it applied? I, A, N (none)

.... and so on. I think that you begin to see some of the difficulties in doing something like this. Just 'off the top' trying to establish what criteria could be used gives me more than a dozen symbols to play with. In order to see if this would work, you would have to apply it to specific cases and see whether this resulted in helmets with the same general characteristics turning up in the same group, and also separating those which are genuinely different.

An 'early' Montefortino might end up looking like this: CuBYNNNNNYYNNN, whereas an Imperial Gallic J might be:
FeHNYSYSYNNNYA and so on!

Well, that was fun! But I wonder if we are any better off? :lol:

Such a system would clearly differentiate between grossly different helmet types. It can be made to separate out quite similar ones as well but it depends on how many criteria you want to build into the classification. It would, for example, lump together Robinson's 'late' Montefortinos with the 'D' and 'E' Coolus types (which may be no bad thing anyway - I can't really tell them apart). It would also collapse the IG series down to just a few possibilities (because we would eliminate the value judgement of how wide the neck guard was and the degree of slope it has, ditto for the brow guard here). One other advantage of this is that you can always add to it without disrupting the entire categoriation.

One of the difficulties with any system is the relatively small number of samples we are dealing with. There are now well over 600 hellmets in the RAT database, the majority of which are 'Montefortino' types (and most of those are A and B). Here we are on firm(ish) ground because the pattern is clear for the most part. For the IG series, however, we are restricted to fewer than 50 examples and we can't really tell whether a variation is a genuine 'type' or a one-off Friday-afternoon job! The same falls true for the 'parade' helmets (there are lots of 'em), but the Imperial Italics are even fewer then the IG types!

All of which makes me appreciate even more what HRR achieved more than 30 years ago! Enough, already!

Caratacus
(Dr. Mike Thomas)