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**richsc** · 02-28-2002, 03:09 AM

All this talk in other threads about bashing expensive helmets to bits in a few minutes makes me wonder. I pull my Robinson out again, and it seems that a lot of these helmets, even given the rust and deformation, dont have any damage at all, except for a few dings and names punched into the neckguards. Of all the Roman helmets found out there, certainly some should have been discards damaged beyond repair? What about those found at Cremona? 
Of course I haven't seen all the helmets, so I'm not speaking from experience. Richard Campbell, Legio XX.
the HIGH NOISE/low signal person for RAT.
ICQ 940236

Daniel S Peterson · 02-28-2002, 06:58 AM

Rich, there are several helmets that exhibit battle damage, some with apparently "killing" blows. you just don't know about them yet. There are probably an equal number again of significant Roman helmets that are not in Robinson. So many have been discovered since that publication, not to mention a huge number being "found" in private collections. I am now working on a new "encyclopedia of Roman military equipment" which will included perhaps 50-70 "new" helmets, but this will come after the next "reenactment" book I mention on another RAT thread. 
 
Because of the value of the metal, Roman helmets were seldom just "thrown away", but recycled instead. Ancient battlefields were scupulously scavenged for items of value, and something as large as a helmet is not easily missed. The facemask from Kalkreise was overlooked, probably because it was fairly flat, and was either covered with leaves/humus in the forest, or perhpas ground into the mud. Of course, small fragments from battles can never all be found (without a metal detector) which is why the Kalkreise site could never have been the Varus battle. The size of the site suggests no more than a centurial size "outpost" being overrun there, just as Tacitus describes happening througout "Free Germany" in the wake of the Varus battle. The "debris field" of the three legion Varus battle would be sevaral kilometers long, and traces more likely than Kalkreise are being found on the Paderborn "plain" by private detectorists (or so I am told), but the artifacts are "coming out of the woodwork, including a unique Coolus helmet. 
 
Sometimes battlefield trash pits contain damaged helmets, or helmet parts, such as Alesia, and a hillfort in Slovenia besieged by Romans. The Colchester pits with Roman armor fragments are probably associatied with the Boudicca revolt. Unfortuantely most Roman battlefields have yet to be posititively identified. Many archaeologists suggest nothing can be found because of ancient metal "scavenging" , but as stated before, unless the ancient "scavengers" had metal detectors, they simply could not find small objects ground into the soil or hidden under leaves. A good example from American experience is Civil War Battlefields. They were obiously scavenged too, but for years aftger the battles, the veterans would return to pick up souvenier, and even today, metal detectorists still find large objects "missed" by their predecessors, including muskets and swords. 
 
But back to the subject, the majority of helmets 
are "water finds" probably deposited for votive reasons. Some would have been lost in ferry capsizes, fording accidents, etc, to but in either case, the helmets would not be battle damaged ones. 
 
None of Marcus's valuable cavalry helmets made by Simkins "were destroyed" in our demonstrations, but all were hit, and occassionally dented by wooden swords. But like real Roman helmets, until their final deposition or recycling, were repaired, sometimes with little or no trace of the damage. 
 
Dan

mcbishop · 02-28-2002, 10:35 AM

Worth mentioning that a lot of helmets are reconstructed when conserved - museums find great difficulty in leaving a helmet 'as found' and have to turn it into something presentable (which can often include considerable amounts of surgery). If you have a look through the pages of JRMES you'll find some of these, or take a look at the recent volume I cited in another thread about the stuff dredged from the Rhine at Xanten. 
 
Mike Bishop

02-28-2002, 01:50 PM

I remember seeing in a french local museum (maybe at Autun?)the fragment of a bronze helmet pierced by a spear, still embedded in it. Impressive... 
No, not a pilum, a regular spear...

**richsc** · 02-28-2002, 01:54 PM

Museum reconstruction must go through periods of thought on this. The Smithsonian's Air&Space used to rebuild it's planes to look like, eg, the Hawker Hurricane was in a 1940 BoB squadron, when it in fact was later and a training plane. 
 
I know the Romans cremated the dead, which is why the anthropologists find so few skeletons, and that they also didn't practice water votives; I guess we have the provincial troops to thank for that. 
I rather hope that the sites of these battles remain yet to be found. It depends very much on the actual terrain how fast artifacts are deposited. I was thinking again of a BoB diagram guiding archaeologists that says things like aircraft parts can actually end up several feet or yards underground after 50 years in southern England. Richard Campbell, Legio XX.
the HIGH NOISE/low signal person for RAT.
ICQ 940236

Richomeres · 02-28-2002, 07:56 PM

Dan, 
you may be prefectly right regarding the metal object on civil war battlefields. But these are only about 140 years old. The Varus battle was fought about 2000 years ago. The corrosion for such a period must be higher. Another factor, in my opionion, is the value of the metal for recycle purposes. This value had to be higher, since metal was much more laborious to get than in the 19th century. Further, as far as I know, the local farmers were known to dig up metal pieces as well as coins while ploughing their fields in the Kalkreise area. It seem the Roman contingent detroyed there was quite a bit larger than a centurial size outpost. 
 
Helge Dunbar

03-01-2002, 01:21 AM

Yup. 
Same reasons you dont see many medieval suits with damage, they were "recycled". Heck, look at all the ancient armour that was melted down as late as WWII to use the metal. I understnd the necessity, but it still makes me nuts

03-01-2002, 01:57 AM

A later example of recycling: during the Renaissance the swan song of the "reiters", a type of mercenary cavalry, happened in 1587 when the last ones were exterminated almost to a man at Auneau, near Chartres. The moats of the castle at Auneau were filled with the armour and helmets of the dead and for two centuries after the battle local farmers came to this "iron mine" to get metal for their farming implements..

Daniel S Peterson · 03-01-2002, 06:48 AM

Helge, yes, metal was more valuable back then, but as I said before, without a metal detector it is impossible to remove all the metal from any battlefield. Anyone who has "just camped in the woods" knows how easy it is to loose your car keys or pocket knife! Now imagine a battle with tens of thousands of men stomping little bits of equipment into the ground. No, despite all of the wishful thinking that Kalkreise is the Varus battle, and thus a holy Germanic shrine to their greatest hero, it is simply impossible. It was just an isolated little detachment like so many others scattered through Free Germany in 9AD. Because of my interest in "battlefield archaology" of all time periods, I have made many contacts with the "German metal-detecting subculture", primarily to buy things like Napoleonic Wars uniform buttons. When Kalkreise was first announced, I understand hundreds of private metal detectorists descended on the region of Kalkreise. From what I was able to learn, virtually nothing Roman was found around Kalkreise, other than in the general area of the Roman (not German) ditch and rampart of the "outpost-camp". It is indeed an important site, and we have learned a lot about the Roman Army that fought in this campaign. If this had been a battlefield of some minimum 30,000 participants (and at least half becoming casualties), there would be a similar scattering of small military finds over a dozen kilometers at least. I have heard tantalizing hints, usually second and third hand, that many more artifacts from the right perod, are being found over a much larger area further east than Kalkreise. 
 
When ancient battlefields occur on an alluvial plain, where sediments can add meters of material over the original site, we may never locate them exactly. Most of the great battles of Hannibal in Italy sadly seem to fit this category. On the other hand, I have met fossil hunters from Spain at a German mineral show, who had a pile of typical Roman glandes lead slingshot projectiles on their table, which they found right on top of the ground, on the hard gravel "hardpan" while searching for things like dinosaur teeth. They didn't know what they were at first, but when they were told, they did a little research, and found out that they were near the area where one of Julius Caesar's Civil War battles was fought. Anyone in the eastern woodlands of America has probably picked up thousand or more year old arrowheads, just where they were lost. 
 
No, the artifacts are always there. Unless extra layers of earth are laid naturally, or for agricultural reason, every ancient battlefield could be located by means of electronic metal detectors. Yes, in some places the ground is so hostile that iron objects may be reduced to a ferrous oxide "stain" in the ground, but the cupric alloy objects will generally remain relatively "intact" and be there until someone finds them again. 
 
With the popularity of metal detecting in Germany, I predict that the "real" Teutoberg site will be found/announced in the next decade, and that its "debris field" of artifacts will spread over an area of many kilometers. 30,000 men or more just won't fit in the quarter kilometer area of "Kalkreise". 
 
If "German Archaelogy" really wanted to find the true Varus Battlefield site, instead of treating the private detectorists like criminals, they would "harness" their talent and enthusiasm, and conduct controlled surveys of the many other areas in the region where Roman military artifacts have been found. The cooperation between privated detectorists and archaeologists on the Custer Battlefield Survey in America is a good succes story. I think they would find willing volunteers who love history/archaeology as much as they do, only happen to be "regular" people without the ways or means to become "real" archaologists. Archaology in Britain has "profited" from the generally better relationship with the "amateur" enthusiasts, who are often willing to let their finds be published. We can all be very thankful that Kalkreise was "discovered" by a British detectorist rather than a German one, lest the finds may have never been revealed. Not that the German detectorist is necesarily "bad", but instead of being "rewarded" for this great discovery, would probably have been arrested and fined. Dan

03-01-2002, 05:43 PM

I tend to agree with Dan. The Kalkriese site is a bit too small. Besides the Teutoburg battle was a running battle that lasted three days, followed by a rout. Obviously, the debris must have been scattered over a wider area than just the Kalkriese site. Maybe it's the remnants of the final roman camp.. The gem studded scabbard makes me suspect the presence of more important people than just local auxilia commanders. 
Another besides: Methink Varus was not going to quell a rebellion. He was trying to go back to Vetera posthaste because the said rebellion cut him off from his supply lines along the Lippe river. 
The fact that he took civilians with him on the way in proves that he wanted to settle more permanently in the Weser area and spend the bad season there. 
The fact that he did not leave the civilians there when he left shows that he couldn't do it. You don't take civilians and three legions to go quell a local rebellion. You do that when you are cut off from your rear, unable to feed your crowd in the upcoming winter season and you want to go back really bad to the safety of the left bank of the Rhine. I suspect this rebellion quelling fable was invented for propaganda purposes. What I suspect happened was a hasty retreat. In this case, a hasty and disorderly retreat.. 
But well, the Kalkriese find allows, after a century or so, to make Theodor Mommsen the winner over Hans Delbruck of the great Teutoburg debate. 
But apparently it isn't over yet..

***Praefectusclassis*** · 03-02-2002, 10:43 AM

There are some points if favor of Kalkriese too: 
- Nobody says it's the site of the complete battle. There too, they say Kalkriese was only part of the huge battlefield. In fact, I think Clunn's book has a map of small finds stretching far to the south-east of Kalkriese. 
- Kalkriese lies on the bottleneck of a natural east-west route across northern Germany. On the southside is a forested hilly region, on the north a swampy area. That makes it an ideal site for an ambush. 
- The fortifications found are only on the southside of the battlefield, they are not straight, but follow the contours of the Kalkrieser Berg (hills) and there are no angles to show that it's an enclosing wall. There's no ditch either. 
- A fully harnessed mule was found, which would point more to a unit on the march than one attacked in its camp. 
 
Greets 
 
Jasper

Daniel S Peterson · 03-02-2002, 05:35 PM

Jasper, we all know Augustan-Tiberian camps and fortifications very commonly followed natural contours instead of set linear patterns. The legionary camp at Marktbreit was mistaken for a Celtic site originally for just this reason. The fact that the site was a "bottleneck", and on an ancient trade route strongly suggests the Romans would have had an outpost there. In order to convincingly "make" this the Varus battle, the defensive feature must be recognized as made by the Germans, supposedly to block the Roman advance. C'mon Jasper, you know and respect the Romans too well to think their scouts wouldn't have noticed something as suspicous as a defensive wall in their path! And this interpretation would mean they walked right up to it and begged to be slaughtered. 
 
The harnessed mule is easy to explain. I think we both agree that a battle was indeed fought at Kalkreise, the scattered, broken bits of military equipment strongly suggest this. Once this little force knew Varus was destroyed, or at least under attack, they probably realized their situation was hopeless, and made preparations to flee, and thats when they were overwhelmed. No, even if we want to believe that the Cherusci sifted all the leaves in the forest to find every tiny bit of equipment for literally dozens of square miles, the extant defensive works negate any possibility this could be the Varus battlefield. Believe me, I WANT the Varus battlefield to be found as much as anyone, but I am not going to believe this tiny Roman outpost was the death site of three Roman legions. Kalkreise is to the Varus battle, what Rourke's Drift was to Isandawana. Dan

***Praefectusclassis*** · 03-02-2002, 06:34 PM

I'm not going to play Kalkriese's advocate here, Dan, just trying to make the historian's problem more difficult 
I do know about the less hard-set lines of early camps. However, they don't meander like either, and this wall does. Besides, this one is just a line, not a continuous enclosing wall, and no ditch. Makes for a very strange camp, doesn't it? 
As to the route and scouting: there are only so many routes a large army can take through forested and hilly terrain. IIRC there route Kalkriese lies on separates from another one a long way to the east. Once the route is taken, if the head discovers an obstacle, it's not easy to turn back with a tail many kilometers long. Rain and storm make that even more difficult. Greets 
 
Jasper

Daniel S Peterson · 03-02-2002, 11:39 PM

Jasper, from Tacitus' account, the Romans never expected the treachery. There were groups scattered all over the place, billeted in villages to help "protect" the populace. My guess is that the post at Kalkreise wasn't given denfensive works until the uprising started, and they only finished the most critical front portion before it came under attack. Tony Clunn and hundreds of other detectorists tried in vain to find a battlefield debris trail, which must exist if Kalkreise was part of the Varus Battle. No such luck, it just petered out. Of course, there are a lot of isolated finds in the region. Momsen listed a number of places, where Augustan date artifacts were found, just as tantalyzing as Kalkreise. Tony just picked that one to search, found a few things, and everybodys screaming we found the battlefield! Let's move the Hermann Denkmal! Cheers, Dan.

Richomeres · 03-03-2002, 04:34 PM

Dan, 
 
sorry to reply late. 
 
Quote:<hr> When ancient battlefields occur on an alluvial plain, where sediments can add meters of material over the original site, we may never locate them exactly.<hr> 
 
You are right. In the area of Kalkreise, whether it was the site of the Varus battle or not, farming has played a major role for centuries. As far as I understand from the people I talked to, prior to the invention of artificial fertilizer, mould from the woodlands was brought to the fields. Over centuries this would mean a serious elevation of the ground level. Indeed the archeologists at Kalkriese had to dig quite a hole to get to the Roman level. 
 
As for the fortification: Referring to my information Arminius (his name was most certainly not Hermann) served in the Roman army. If this is true, he would know how he could take advantage of the ground and how to fortify his positions, even if we suppose that his troops did not. 
 
Regarding the debris trail: In an exhibition catalogue from 1995 I found a map of that particular area showing a trail of Roman finds, as referred to, about 5,5 km long. 
 
Dan, I am not pounding on the theory that Kalkriese is the site of the Varus battle. Maybe you are right and lots of others are wrong. However, we cannot disregard the fact that something happened there, in the right period, which was not a minor skirmish. This is based finds and publications. 
 
Finally Dan, this has nothing to do with holy shrines and ridiculous monuments. If someone wants that green guy he can take it along with my blessing. We are here to discuss Roman military history. Take your sneering to your local pub. 
No offence intended. 
 
Helge

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