Roman helmet designations

[Lusitano]

Nuno,

The link below has a nice illustartive timeline to demonstrate the point:

http://www.romancoins.info/MilitaryEqui ... elmet.html

Brilliant
Altough my original question was just about the letters and their relevant meaning if any, its certanly instructive to see the different opinions about a "relatively simple thing" as a letter reference for a helmet.

It seems to me that these small variations of the helmets are probably due to the natural evolution of armor and the "tweaking" of the helmet by the legions themselves. And it would seem a herculean task to properly designate every type of helmet. For all we know it could be a special award non-documented award given to specially brave legionaires. Heck in the napoleonic wars the elite was allowed to grow a beard as a reward for their service. Or they could even be a "commemorative edition" just look at coins today.

[sulla felix]

Matt,

I look forward to seeing the results of your project - I agree that Robinson needs updating and developing further, and I am sure Robinson himself would be quite happy with that, and feel sure that he would have done so himself.

Anything that contributes to a greater understanding of the world of the Ancient Romans is to be applauded in my view

[sulla felix]

Jim,

That was an interesting link thankyou (being a newbie I had not gotten round to reading that yet!).

Interesting how Lorica Segmentata are apparently classified via find sites -maybe Mike Bishop is looking at a Robinsonesque typology for those? :wink:

[Tarbicus]

They're not that different Jim, I just poured over the helmet base looking at the Gallic's and they all share the exact same features.

Well, that's a subjective opinion Matt :wink: Where you see a shaped piece of iron with a bowl, neckguard, browguard and cheekpieces, I see a different list of things.

[mcbishop]

Jim,

That was an interesting link thankyou (being a newbie I had not gotten round to reading that yet!).

Interesting how Lorica Segmentata are apparently classified via find sites -maybe Mike Bishop is looking at a Robinsonesque typology for those? :wink:

[size=200:1bhp3rsc]No![/size]

For those who want to see what I wrote 20 years ago (eek!) about typologies and military equipment, you can have a look at my '"Evolution of certain features"' paper (which is a 5Mb download – sorry, but it's just a scan of the pages; it will be reset to be much smaller if and when the whole book appears on the web ultimately). What I say there still stands, only I now think things are more complex and that you have to delve into evolutionary theory (adaptive radiation and the like) and taphonomy to even begin to understand why the typologies that we construct are so flawed, two-dimensional, and simplistic.

A Robinsonian system of classification differs little from the Pitt Rivers Museum's displays of things arranged according to how they look and is essentially, as best, two-dimensional. You need to think in at least three dimensions to even begin to grasp the complexities of what determines why one helmet looks the way it does and be prepared to defend your definition of 'similarity' (for pre-industrial hand-made artefacts) if you say helmet A is identical to helmet B and is thus an Imperial-Wibbly type Z.

The development of lorica segmentata (like most military equipment, in my opinion) will never be satisfactorily classifiable in a Type A/Type B system precisely because of adaptive radiation. At the moment we have Kalkriese –> Corbridge –> Newstead (we'll leave the Alba Iulia out of it for the time being) but how long will it be before we find a Kalbridge or Corstead hybrid – and does that mean anybody in the Roman period even gave a damn but rather were just concerned with improving segmental body armour per se? What we are describing is what we see, not what was. The developmental process of lorica seg was more organic, fluid, dynamic... whatever, than is encompassed in Robinson's scheme and we need to recognise that and the fact that our sample from which we are working is ridiculously small, and invariably biased in ways we can't even begin to comprehend (hence the need for archaeologists to understand taphonomy... which most don't (many haven't even heard of it), but they're not alone in generalising from the particular; palaeontologists have only 30 T-Rexes to work from out of however many million originally lived, and they supposedly do understand taphonomy!).

The type-site system is no more or less satisfactory and both are equally flawed as an attempt to define a complex process in simplistic terms. That is not to say we should not use typologies, they are a valuable research tool. However, they are not, never have been, and never can be an absolute upon which you pin a theoretical framework forever more.

Mike Bishop
(Imperial-Wibbly Type C, but verging on a D)

[sulla felix]

It was just a suggestion Mike!

Thanks for posting the article - I will read and digest this with great interest.

All this talk of "new archaeology" has made me harken back to my days at Sheffield Uni, listening to John Barrett speak in a language he claimed was English (only kidding Prof.). One thing I do remember though was a passage from a piece of his work in which he suggested that Archaeologists's apparent obsession with typoligy and classification was basically an attempt to make sense of an otherwise incomprehensible Archaeological record. The problem being that the classification had become the focus of attention, and much academic debate, and we had simply forgotten about the humans that made, cherished and used the artefacts in question.

[MeinPanzer]

They're not that different Jim, I just poured over the helmet base looking at the Gallic's and they all share the exact same features. Any variations could easily be explained by my reasons above. Not to mention we don't know if someone with money had a smith do some custom work on a gallic type of helm to suit it to their desires. That type of custom work doesn't in my mind warrant a new helmet type.

Robinson's typology needs to be revised..it's antiquated and no longer efficient. Especially given the helmets being found now.

Barry, 50 years was in fact just an arbitrary number I used as an example, and shouldn't be taken as any more than that.

I'm going to make this into my side project after speaking to Jasper about it...once I start to get somewhere on it, I'll post what I have for comments.

The next step, of course, would be to provide a similar, comprehensive system to identify both Hellenistic and Roman varieties of helmets and to "bridge the gap" between the two bodies, and eventually to go even further and bridge the gap between Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic, and Roman helmets. Dintsis' system for identifying Hellenistic helmets is in about as much need for change as Robinson's. This is something which, to my knowledge, has not really been attempted in the past. Imagine being able to clearly identify all sorts of helmets and their evolutions within a 7-8 century timespan!