Well dressed enemy

[Anonymous]

Tacitus almost certainly means "Nude" rather than" unarmoured" - he claims the Germans were naked or practically so in their domestic life as well as at war.<br>
<br>
Whether he's telling the truth or just propagandising is, of course, another matter ;-)<br>
<br>
Cheers,<br>
<br>
Andrew<br>
<br>
<p></p><i></i>

[ghandi]

Ennius Paulinus already mentioned our hp ( www.chausari.de ).<br>
Thanx for this!<br>
Our group focuses the time around BC and the roman conquest in Northwest-Germany.<br>
Luckily we have a number of textiles from bogs already mentioned. Unfortunatly most are dated in the centuries before or after our period. Anyway, these object show the way how we have to imagine style, construction and fabric types. At least there are some tiny textile fragments corroded on metal finds from our period.<br>
In fact we are using all three sources, ususally avaible for the reenactor: Originals, contemporary artwork and written sources. The last one is quite thin. You read about Tacitus before. The artwork is broadly spread in terms of naturality and roman art convention. There was something like a "barbarian topos" in showing non-romans. But you can see germanic people in tight sitting clothes, much like Tacitus mentioned. The nakedness is even more shown - this might be the barbarian topic too.<br>
So we take the style shown in the artwork, think of Tacitus and compare it with the originals like the Thorsberg clothes and other. We change the construction slightly to be conform with the broad style shown in the artwork but to it with the technique of the originals.<br>
I think this is best way to reconstruct germanic clothers.<br>
<br>
One piece of dress was obviously most important: The cloak or coat. That is a retangular piece of heavy cloth worn exactly like a roman sagum with a fibula. A germanic warrior is not complete without one and a man without clothers but with a cloak is a well dressed one! Remember the germanic chieftains on the Trajan coloumn.<br>
The quality of the originals are mostly high standart with broad tablet weaved edges. But obviously there would have been some of minor quality too.<br>
<br>
The colours shown on our page are all manageable with natural stuff. Some of our women even combine urine with onions...<br>
From recent analysis of originals it obvious that the clothes seem to be much more colourful as most people thought. Rmember that the acidic moisture of bogs do fade not only colours away. The Thorsberg trousers and tunic were of brightly red colour, by now it is something of beige/yellow.<br>
Some of our clothers are made out of handweaved textiles, especially the cloaks.<br>
<br>
ghandi<br>
<p>CHASUARI - Germanic Warriors of 1st ct AD.<br>
www.chasuari.de </p><i></i>

[Anonymous]

Just a quick thought here on nude warriors, but wasn't the primary defense for most warriors at this point a shield anyways? I know earlier Roman soldiers were well armoured, but the Germanics weren't...they depended on a shield. As such, what purpose would clothing serve them in combat, other than to keep dangly-bits out of the way<br>
<br>
Still, *I* wouldn't do it. I don't wanna show MY dangly-bits to anyone but my wife<br>
<br>
Tom <p></p><i></i>