Belt Fitting Typologies

[amagee]

I've been looking through various posts relating to 1st century A.D. military belts and I will occasionally see a reference to "belt plate type X", "belt fitting X", etc. but I haven't seen any references to where these typologies appear in publications. If anyone knows where these typologies exist from, I would greatly appreciate the information.

Andrew

[M. Demetrius]

That's a very smart question, Andrew. Welcome to the forum!

OK, experts, here's your chance to shine!

[jvrjenivs]

I've been looking through various posts relating to 1st century A.D. military belts and I will occasionally see a reference to "belt plate type X", "belt fitting X", etc. but I haven't seen any references to where these typologies appear in publications. If anyone knows where these typologies exist from, I would greatly appreciate the information.

I wondering if you can give some examples of X. I don't know of any particular typology for beltplates and I would mainly name them by their findingspot (in which case X would be a placename, like oberstimm, vindonissa, corbridge, etc) or the scene they show (belt plates of the wolf & twin, Trompetenmuster, or 'openwork' type). Of course the findspot can also be accompanied with a findnumber (within the collection of that findspot) such as Brass buckle Vindonissa 1183 type. So, after a find from Vindonissa with findnumber 1183.

[Peroni]

In Archaeologica Vol 109 (1991) Pages 47 - 84 An article by Nick Griffith and Francis Grew article "The pre-Flavian military belt: the evidence from Britain" has some typologies if I remember correctly.

[amagee]

I have actually been working on belts quite extensively and I recently completed and received honors for an undergraduate thesis dealing with 1st century A.D. military belts. As I had never discovered previous typologies for belt parts of any kind while doing the initial research, I created my own (which in lieu of additional work, I have discovered really still needs a significant amount of work). When I saw the occasional use of apparent typological terms here and there, I was worried that I had somehow missed the intricate work of some small publication which I had never come across.

Of course the findspot can also be accompanied with a findnumber (within the collection of that findspot) such as Brass buckle Vindonissa 1183 type. So, after a find from Vindonissa with findnumber 1183.

This clears up certain things I've seen.

In Archaeologica Vol 109 (1991) Pages 47 - 84 An article by Nick Griffith and Francis Grew article "The pre-Flavian military belt: the evidence from Britain" has some typologies if I remember correctly.

I had totally forgotten about the type structure of this article which explains a lot of what I saw.

While I do not mean to in anyway devalue the impeccable work put into this article, I quickly rejected using the "Type A" and "Type B" terms which are implemented to distinguish belt plates in the article. This is for a couple of reasons:

1: The difference between belt plates requires a balance between the dimensions of the artifacts and the artistic elements they incorporate which I feel the broad "A" and "B" categories fail to accomplish successfully.

2: I also generally disagree that certain plates in each category should be grouped together (I'd be happy to explain specifics if anyone is interested).

So in the end, my typology of 1st century A.D. belt plates contains 4 different main types and I intend to fully flesh these out with sub-types as I continue my work.

I greatly appreciate the responses and I'm quite certain this solved my current belt-related dilemma.

Andrew

[Peroni]

I'd be very interested in reading the finished work Andrew!

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

This is a work I would really look forward to seeing too!