Tribulus

[M. Demetrius]

I'm certain they'd be carried in a box. What else would hold all the points in? A sack would get torn up pretty quickly, then trickle them out onto the marching trail. Double plus ungood.

I wonder if they went over the battlefield and picked them up for reuse? A field would be rendered pretty useless for years when it's full of thousands of stabbing iron thorns. Area denial yes, but not a decade of area denial.

[Robert]

I wonder if they were used in battlefield situations at all. If so, we would have found a lot more then a few in a pit here and there. More likely they were used in the same way as a perimeter minefield or to deny easy acces over a road, certainly at night. You can round them up by drawing a netting over the surface, like sweeping for tracks or smoothening the tennisgravel. The Z shaped ones on a stake are often found in relation to wolfpits around a fortification. And yes, stepping on one of these could ruin your day.
Mind you, I once put a nail through the sole of my shoe, stood on the board to yank it out and briskly walked home, making little squishy sounds as my sock turned red. It was not unbelievable painfull untill someone chose to clean it with a swab dripping of iodine Now, for horses ....... hock:

[Magnus]

Yeah, but could they not be deployed before a set piece battle, in order for a roman commander to choose where an enemy advances from by denying him use of certain ground?

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

They used to dig ditches for that purpose, so perhaps they strew a few of these babies in at the same time for good measure? Sounds feasible to me Matt.

[Tarbicus]

I get the impression the Romans were very careful about making sure the enemy couldn't get their hands on their own gear, only to see it used against themselves later on. It's no great stretch of the imagination to think they had slaves or soldiers collect them back after a battle.

[aitor iriarte]

Maurikius gives us the clue (Sorry, I haven't my Strategikon with me now to quote the correct passage :oops: )
You only have to tie caltrops to a rope at regular intervals and then tie a peg at either end. You can lay the caltrops very quickly and, what is most important, recover them later (in case you haven't been routed, otherwise, it will be the enemy who will recover them! )
I made a test model some time ago (sorry, no pics twisted:

Aitor

[Peroni]

You only have to tie caltrops to a rope at regular intervals and then tie a peg at either end

Just like the modern police 'Stinger' for puncturing car tyres!

[Primvs Pavlvs]

Matt,

I have made these by forge welding them, and by trying to split them. Honestly I feel they are much easier to make by forge welding them.

I just heat up the stock and fold it around to make a X with a loop. Then heat the center, apply flux and hit twice once the welding temp is up.

Cut the loop to form a X then sharpen the points on the anvil and form.

Usually takes about 3 to 5 min to make.

There is also the other type which is a straight S shape and one end is driven into a wooden spike, whole the other end is sharpend and barbed

I think these were known as Stimuli

[M. Demetrius]

Paul, that's kind of how I'd envisioned making them, or by taking one long rod and welding a series of short pieces across it at the correct intervals, then cutting the long piece into short, equal length segments.

Since it's not really welding for structural strength, it doesn't need to be a perfect fusion weld.

Natch, the question is, what did the originals look like, and it should be easy to tell which way they were made by looking. Probably they were made however the smith decided was easiest and fastest for him, and not all the same size, thickness, etc. It wasn't art, it was "Man, I have to make CM of these today before I can go to the masseur. Slave, bring more charcoal, it's gonna be a long day!"

[Matt Lukes]

Well as I believe I wrote, they were certainly made the way I did- and apparently by welding as well, so the answer is both. I'm not sure I see either method necessarily being that much easier though if starting from the same point- a little billet of iron. All the shaping is the same, just in one case you split the arms and bend them into an X- not a long process- in the other you have to wait for the metal to reach welding temperature

[M. Demetrius]

True. I'm asking out of ignorance, not argumentativeness: do the originals known all look to be the split version?

Even though it wasn't called that, blacksmithing has always been sort of an assembly line philosophically. One on the anvil, two in the fire, one in the slack bucket. If making a bunch of anything, they don't really get done one at a time, they are more productively made in a multitask procedure. Chances are good, if they had apprectices, they made things like that, while the head smith made the more crucial items.

[aitor iriarte]

I'm now at home and with my Strategikon 8)

On book IV, 3 Ps-Maurikius explains how to lay a mine-field composed of:

Iron caltrops... scattered or placed in position, strung together so they can easily collected after being used.

Later, he details a little more:

XII B, 6.
There should be... caltrops tied together with light cords attached to an iron peg so they can be easily collected.

Aitor

[Robert]

Most interesting thread! I like the part of stringing out the caltrops. The forgweld with the looped X is very illustrative and seems to work well. For simplicity, I would prefer the theory of the split billet, as it requires less effort forging the stock, the cuts being done with a hot chisel or a hardy. It would be nice to experiment on the time and effort needed to make both types and yes, I am very interested in the findings on the pieces recovered from digs, as it should be possible to see how they were made.

[Marcus Julius]

I'm now at home and with my Strategikon 8)

On book IV, 3 Ps-Murikius explains how to lay a mine-field composed of:

Iron caltrops... scattered or placed in position, strung together so they can easily collected after being used.

Later, he details a little more:

XII B, 6.
There should be... caltrops tied together with light cords attached to an iron peg so they can be easily collected.

Aitor

...and to think, when I was in school I was told that barbed wire was invented by American farmers/ranchers?

[Matt Lukes]

Oh it was- a bunch of tribuli on a rope isn't any kind of fencing or barrier per se. It's not a bad way to collect them, but then it kind of points them out so seems less brilliant from the effectiveness standpoint. Rope kind of stands out even in grass so unless someone's actually defending the tribulus 'field' with range weapons, it wouldn't be too difficult to sneak around them.

And I tried welding and it seeeeemed to work at first but when I put the nacent tribulus back in to the forge again and struck it one more time in the middle, it came apart. No weld. Not only that but even from the first strike, the place where the two pointed rods overlapped flattened entirely so to be honest, unless one were to look closely for the seam, it would look prety much like the cut billet type. That leads me to wonder just how one could look at a piece and know it's forge-welded?