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Hi!
I wanna ask you,fellow soldiers of Rome,if you can present to me any evidence on NON-riveted chainmail.Fragments will do,i only need evidence for it's existence.I would be extremely happy if you could give me some from the later periods,like 3rd,4rth century.
Thanks all
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Only pre-Roman that I know of....
possibly 1st century BC?:
From: "The Excavation of a Tumulus at Lexden, Colchester" Archaeologia vol LXXVI, size of the rings was said to be 1/4 inch outside dia but having seen them they looked smaller to me.....
" The links are made of fine wire butting the ends, not by welding or pinning" and this looked to be the case...
Possibly 3rd century BC?:
kirkburn mail from "Iron age Cemeteries in East Yorkshire" ring size 8.2-9.2mm outside dia, 1.5-1.9mm thick, again said to be "butt-jointed".....
both were heavily corroded as you might expect.
Ivor
"And the four bare walls stand on the seashore. a wreck a skeleton a monument of that instability and vicissitude to which all things human are subject. Not a dwelling within sight, and the farm labourer, and curious traveller, are the only persons that ever visit the scene where once so many thousands were congregated." T.Lewin 1867
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Despite what some publications claim (mostly because the researchers describing mail actually have little experience examining it), both Roman and pre-Roman mail was not butted.
For example, the British Museum has X-rayed the Kirkburn mail remains (originally reported butted) which clearly showed the presence of rivets.
I can offer you this as a sole consolation: At Thorsberg in Germany some butted rings have been found (soon to be published in the new series about the Thorsberg finds, which can then be bought at http://www.zbsa.eu/publikationen/neu-erschienen). However, these concern repairs at the copper alloy decorative border of the mail shirts.
Best wishes,
Martijn
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The original Cuimesti report said it was butted and the photos look butted to me but it needs a radiological analysis to be sure. There are no Roman examples that are confirmed to have been butted. The few that have been re-examined like Kirkburn have shown that they are riveted as Martijn said.
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They were also heavily mechanically cleaned, since it was found as a roll of corroded rings. The cleaning makes me hesitant to take them at face value, especially when seen from a photograph. I agree they look butted, but I would not want to conclude anything without further analysis.
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Thanks for the fast replies.I need evidence from the A.D. centuries,the best would be,as i said,3rd or 4th century.I hope someone can help me out from the would-be answeres.
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Quote:Thanks for the fast replies.I need evidence from the A.D. centuries,the best would be,as i said,3rd or 4th century.I hope someone can help me out from the would-be answeres.
There is none, not in a Roman context nor any other. All mail that I know of from that period consists of alternating rows of riveted and solid links. However, the commercially available riveted mail looks terrible - it doesn't even remotely resemble Roman mail. If you aren't comfortable making your own riveted links then you would actually get a better looking hamata by using butted and solid links.
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Quote: repairs at the copper alloy decorative border of the mail shirts.
Many of the mail fragments from Dura (cAD250) also have rows of butted copper rings at the edges, although the mail itself (where it is possible to tell) is rivetted iron. Simon James suggests that, besides a decorative function, this copper edging prevented sweat from corroding the iron.
Nathan Ross
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Quote:Simon James suggests that, besides a decorative function, this copper edging prevented sweat from corroding the iron.
I can't see how. Sweat soaks the padding underneath and reacts with the entire garment. The armpits are the most exposed to sweat, not the edges. The other problem with copper rings and copper riveting is that the galvanic reaction between iron and copper greatly accelerates the corrosion compared to iron-only mail. The Copper-alloy edging was employed purely for decoration. The trident pattern on one of the Dura shirts is confirmation of that.
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Quote:For example, the British Museum has X-rayed the Kirkburn mail remains (originally reported butted) which clearly showed the presence of rivets.
Is there a report available on that, the BM Collections online site only mentions butted and obviously needs bringing up to date....
Ivor
"And the four bare walls stand on the seashore. a wreck a skeleton a monument of that instability and vicissitude to which all things human are subject. Not a dwelling within sight, and the farm labourer, and curious traveller, are the only persons that ever visit the scene where once so many thousands were congregated." T.Lewin 1867
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Well, it seems there is no way Rab Kristóf is going to get away with buying cheap Indian butted mail and pass it off as authentic for the period ......
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Quote:martijn.wijnhoven post=361230 Wrote:For example, the British Museum has X-rayed the Kirkburn mail remains (originally reported butted) which clearly showed the presence of rivets.
Is there a report available on that, the BM Collections online site only mentions butted and obviously needs bringing up to date....
There is no published report. The only published record is on page 32 of:
Gilmour, B.J. (1997): Iron Age Mail in Britain. Royal Armouries Yearbook 2: 26-35.
Last year I had the opportunity to examine the Kirkburn mail shirt in person as part of my PhD research. I also spoke with the curator about Gilmour’s comment. A quick search in the BM administration rendered the X-rays and unpublished information.
Cheers,
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Thankfully it's not the case  I got riveted myself,made by a craftsman from my own country,and it is a quality product.Actually it's quality is far superior to any others i've seen on many "hq" teams in Europe...
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Quote:Well, it seems there is no way Rab Kristóf is going to get away with buying cheap Indian butted mail and pass it off as authentic for the period ......
Thankfully it's not the case.I do not know why do you even assume.I got into an argument on a different forum about the existence of non-riveted mail,and i thought the best place to seek evidence is this forum.My own mail is made by a craftsman from my own country,and actually is of far better quality then i've seen on many good roman-reenactor teams in West-Europe
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Quote:Well, it seems there is no way Rab Kristóf is going to get away with buying cheap Indian butted mail and pass it off as authentic for the period ......
"Riveted" does not equal "historical". Butted links produces a hamata that looks far closer to extant Roman examples than the riveted mail available from India.
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