Painted lorica segmentata ?

[mcbishop]

There is absolutely no evidence that lorica segmentata was ever painted.

"Conservation has suggested that some fragments of armour were painted black . . ."

"There are, in addition, at least 14 fragments of ferrous plate, which can be identified as body armour, but are of uncertain type...None add significantly to the conclusions drawn except for a few fragments where conservation seems to suggest that some of the armour could have been painted black . . ."

Does "body armour . . . of uncertain type" exclude lorica segmentata? And does "conservation has suggested . . ." and "conservation seems to suggest . . ." constitute "absolutely" no evidence that lorica segmentata was ever painted?

Not sure I see any contradiction here. Jenny Jones, the conservator, thought there might have been traces of paint on what might have been body armour. If that was indeed the case, there are a million and one ways in which that could have occurred, but I don't see that as evidence that lorica segmentata was painted. If somebody chooses to speculate that that might have been the case, all well and good. It does not pass my criteria for 'evidence' in this case, though. There was only a small amount of segmentata amongst the Millennium finds in comparison to the armguard and scale fragments, so on numerical (possibly even statistical, although so far as I am aware no such work was done on this point) grounds alone it seems an unlikely interpretation.

Mike Bishop