Posts: 1,576 Location: Bergen, Norway
Wed 11 Apr, 2012 7:13 pm
Adam: As a historian you can never know things for certain. However, you can find out what is likely based on the sources you have on hand.
Let us take the example at hand. We have quite a lot of sources on arms and armament in the high middle ages. Many of them are very similar. This would lead us to belive that this was the acepted image of a warrior looked.
Mail armour, kite or heater
shield, coif and helmet (Pointed, cervilere, kettlehat or one of the various varieties of
great helm)
Then we have some anomalies, which show people in other equipment. This is remarkable, since most high medevial sources are very uniform.
Now, we have to look at what we know and try to figure out why these warriors are drawn diferently. Most commonly, they turn out to be depictions of some kind of heathen, and thus are distinguished by diferent equipment.
However, the artists have no direct experience with heathens, so they start out with the familiar figure, and add cliche features.
Round shield, pointed helmet. In the late middle ages it becomes known that the heathens use single edged swords, prompting
western artists to start depicting them with (often oversized) european falchions.
So it's not that the depictions are wrong. They are accurate depictions of how the drawer imagined a contemporary heathen. They are just not showing a
western european knight.
In the depictions of contemporary events and actual persons, however, you do not generally see these items. Which is why the picture José-Manuel poste was so interesting.
It should also be noted that the uniformity of the sources is especially noticable in the high middle ages. In the late middle ages, you see a lot more variation in equipment, Including shields.