Reconstructing Ancient Linen Body Armor - New Book

[Giannis K. Hoplite]

Hard to know where to post about this subject anymore, since this forum was revived with such vigor many threads have merged their topics.

I talked with Vengelis Chrisostomou, archeologist at Pella and Archontiko. There are no cuirass remains whatsoever. There is not one metal cuirass, despite the multitude of helmets and swords and shields. In most cases the preservation conditions are so bad that not even the bones have remained, despite the occasional organic finds, almost always in the form of metal oxides.

That said there have been some traces of fabric found, probably linen. It is hard to relate them with a cuirass however, because they have also found them outside of the body, so probably they belonged to clothes and the shroud. There have been many extremely thin pieces and some thicker, up to 2mm in thickness, and we are not talking about actual fabrics but mostly few pieces of yarn. No evidence of layers either. The commonest arrangement is about 10:8 yarns by square cm.

So there is nothing that can be derived by the finds from Archontiko. It seems that they were never buried with their cuirasses, or that they weren't wearing cuirasses at that time.

Most shields from Archaic Archintiko seem to have been embossed round shields of unknown size. The bosses are about 30-40 cm diameter. It seems to me that even when Hoplite shields are found those would be luxury imported items and not used in a phalanx. After all the aspis is a wonderful weapon, not heavy and multipurpose.

Khairete
Giannis