Vexillum bearer animal skin?

[Sam Steele]

Hi there, my museum is hoping to present our new vexillum banner
For the orignal second Augusta legion's official birthday.
But apart from trajans column. Is there any evidence of what animal skin
If a animal at all the vexillum bearer wore????

[Paullus Scipio]

Hi there, my museum is hoping to present our new vexillum banner
For the orignal second Augusta legion's official birthday.
But apart from trajans column. Is there any evidence of what animal skin
If a animal at all the vexillum bearer wore????

I expect you readily appreciate that we don't have much to go on, but for what it's worth or the 1-2 C AD, we really only have Trajan's column, ( half-a-dozen or so vexilla depicted) the Adamklissi monument (several vexilla epicted)and the odd gravestone e.g Gnaeus Musius, for standard bearers generally. Tentatively, it would appear that for infantry it was only signifers who wore animal skin head-dress. Praetorians had Lion-skin, with full mask including jaws; Legionary signifers wore Bearskins, again with full mask and jaws, while Auxilia signifers wore Bearskins with the mask cut away.

Aquilifers (Eagle bearers), Imaginifers ( Emperors Image bearers) and vexillifers ( cloth standard bearers) always seem to be depicted bare-headed even when wearing armour - half-a-dozen or so times on Trajan's column and three or four times on the Adamklissi monument.

Cavalry standard bearers don't seem to have worn animal skins, but did wear helmets.

[Luca]

This is interesting me a lot.

"Legionary signifers wore Bearskins" is an important point. I would like to see some images where is undoubtely visible a bear rather than a lion or a leopard.
All the images I have accessed in many years shown lions and leopards only or "unidentified" animals that cannot be assessed as "bears".

So, because probably I didn't check all the evidences it would be very useful that someone would post on RAT some images of "bears" in order to prove the presence of such kind of animals on the standard bearers.