Metal plate beneath Linothorakes or Spolades

[PMBardunias]

What are the circumstances of the find that make the author assume this is armor? Granted, that's often a good first guess with a substantial piece of sheet bronze, but it's not the only possibility! It looks to be about 14 inches long, and is curved top to bottom--that doesn't strike me as any sort of breastplate. At that length, it would have to be curved side to side, to go around the body, and it won't fit high up between the arms. Of course, it's hard to tell for sure which part is supposed to be "up".

Below is the portion of the paper dealing with this. Given the state of the find I don't put too much faith in its curvature meaning much either way. I have no access to the original description referred to below.

During work on the citadel (field director-S. A.Savchuk), part of a bronze corselet was found in Room 93. It was in a level below the earliest floor, and above this on the first and fourth floors respectively a large
bronze Graeco-Bactrian coin (still not identified more precisely) and a silver drachm of the last Graeco-
Bactrian king Heliocles (c. 145-130 B.C.) were discovered. Therefore, the level from which our piece of
armour comes dates to the Hellenistic period, or at least it is earlier than the reign of Heliocles. The piece is
a fragment of breast-plate with the edge of a hole for the left arm of the bearer (Fig. 1). It consists of two
overlapping parts fastened together by iron rivets upper part overlaps the lower one). The piece
measures 35 x 20 cm., thickness 0.2-0.3 cm., diameter of holes for rivets 0.3-0.6 cm., diameter of rivet-heads
0.8-1.3 cm.It seems very possible that the fragment belongs to a typical Greek cuirass (thorax). It is true that as a rule
the classical thorax consisted of two large entire plates for breast and back (in detail, see below), whereas our
breast-plate is made of two pieces at least. However, it may be supposed that in this case we are dealing with a
repair of the corselet after it was damaged in combat or through long use. If this supposition is correct, this
piece of armour from Kampyr Tepe is the most eastern find of the real Greek thorax. Its use in the Middle East
in ancient times was hitherto known only through representations of pictorial art (see below). Until now
the most eastern find of an actual thorax was an iron cuirass found at the First Prokhorovka barrow in the
Orenburg region (south of the Southern Urals), which is dated to the third-second centuries B.C.
(Rostovtzeff, 1918: 12-14, pls. 15, 16; Simonenko, 1989: 70).

Savchuk, S. A., 1989a. "Tsitadel' Kampyrtepe", Antichnyie r annesrednevekovyder
evnost..i. , 73-80.
--,
1989b. "U Oxiiskoi perepravy", Vekhi vremion. Rasskazy o
pamiatnikakihs toriii kul'turyU zbekistanaA. l'manakh-89(T ashkent),
69-75.

It seems to me that if you want metal armor and can afford it, it's not going to be hidden. (Ancient Greece and Medieval Europe don't really compare well, on this point.) Sure, we know that the tube and yoke cuirass was sometimes reinforced by scales, but why assume that could also be reinforced by hidden plates? If you really want to equip troops cheaply and quickly, don't make armor for them!

I addressed this above, but you are assuming that the T-Y was created to be cheaper. This may not be the case at all- you don't draw all your heroes on vases in the cheapest armor of the day. Better to go with Heroic nudity.

Sorry to be a wet blanket, here, but it really sounds like a string of assumptions...

I disagree, this is a string of assumption plus one piece of possible data. That puts it one piece of possible data ahead of glued linen, and thus it must be considered.

And at some point we're going to run into people who combine this house of cards with Nick Sekunda's little fantasy about the linothorax being linen-covered iron, and a new unkillable factoid of Greek "coats of plates" will be born.

The problem is not in the conjecture, but in the reception. There was nothing wrong with Sekunda's or even Connolly's suggestion. You yourself inspired many a glued linothorax (I realize that is a rebuke at this point, sorry ). We just have to be clear that these are possibilities, not even probabilities. But if they influence an archaeologist to take a second look at metal fragments, they could provide more data in the future.