Corbridge Hoard

[Robert Vermaat]

I shudder to think what you'll make of the Corbridge-type fittings from 4th-century contexts at León!

Am I the only one who's eyeball popped out when I read this? Mike can you shed some more light on this?

Maybe. :wink: In Spain we have some really late segmentata finds, which throws a nice spanner in the wheels of the 'smooth evolution' theory which had the segmentata phased out by the late 3rd century.
Of course, we already knew that the Roman army was not comparable to a modern army - development of arms and armour was not uniform across the empire, and 'supposedly obsolete' material could not only remain in use for a long time, production did not uniformly halt all of a sudden when new types of helmets, swords and armour were introduced elsewhere.

It's always a bit of an eye-opener for us modern folks, who are used to 'old' material being repalced by 'new' material all at once. For me it was the realisation that 'old-style' ranks (centurian, decurion etc.) continued in use in 'old-style' units next to 'new' ranks such as an ordinarius and a primicerius, for centuries.