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I understand that you were going to soon have a complete lorica hamata and were going to do some tests of the hamata (and subarmoralis). Did you get a chance to complete the shirt and test it? If so, what results? |
Well Nathan, the shirt is in the final stages of completion, but this is not going to be the one I am going to test on. I have four others in the works that will be used for testing. The sample you handled at Matt's is of a size I am doing for a famous client. The shirt is styled after the cavalry type hamatae. Instead of having only a "U" shaped doubling over the shoulders, it will be in the shape of a short cape or shawl. That link size is very close to those used in the pieces that were found at Carlingwark Loch. Due to their small size they are a bit of a pain in the rear to work with. But, the look of the finished product is well worth the effort.
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Also, the earliest maille find you report, are you speaking of Eastern Scythian finds? What was the earliest maille find? I am aware of the Ciumesti find, of course, but earlier finds I only read of by reference to "even earlier Scythian finds". |
No, I am speaking of the Romanian find as it is the one that is most commonly accepted by academia as being the earliest. I am sure their could be more out there waitring to be discovered. The reason the Scythian finds are nto regards to highly is due to the nomadic nature of the people. In order to produce mail you need a manufacturing infrastructure that is not really attainable by a nomadic culture.
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As a side note, after viewing the particular piece of Roman maille, it almost immediately answered some of my questions, as to why it may have been superceded by segmentata in part, and as to its effectiveness, much more. |
The segmentata never superceded the hamata. Both were used together.
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The Roman maille is so extremely fine, that is approaches a jeweler level of workmanship on each link. The cost to produce quality maille of this sort must have been tremendous. I would say that likely production cost played a large role in the rise of the segmentata over the hamata. |
All mail shares this characteristic not just Roman mail. If the cost of production was so high, why then did the segmentata get phased out and and not the hamata? As I have said before in order to produce mail in any quantity there needs to be a very large manufacturing infrastructure. Let's break this down. The starting point for mail or any other object made from metal is the mining of the raw material. This material is then refined. For wire to be made the material has to be refined to a very high degree. In fact some of the Roman links that have been analyzed have been shown to be almost pure iron. Without this degree of refining the material will be unable to be effectively drawn into wire. And for those of you who think that wire drawing did not come into being until the Middle Ages think again. The pieces of mail that I have studied from before and after the Roman era are made from links that are extremely uniform in size and shape. Without the ability to draw wire it would not be possible to achieve this degree of uniformity. Next in line are the people who manufacture the solid links, those who make the riveted links, and those who actually create the garments.
The labor needed for production of the segmentata was much less than that needed for mail. If you lower the production of mail you are now left with a large number of people who are not working. Since mail never went of style or production and the segmentata did, what does that tell us? Matt can give a better view of this than I can though.
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Jeremy:
We tend to take the best surviving examples of arms and armor and classify them as what was used during a certain period. However, as you said, there would of course be a wide variance in quality (and there are lots of reasons to assume that what still exists today is often on the higher bend of that curve). Patrick: Absolutely. That's one of the most important things we should keep in mind when discussing these issues. The ancients were great recyclers. They never threw anything away as long as it was usable, especially labor intensive things like armor and weapons. There's also the issue of quality to consider. Marketing and profit were big issues then just like today. Not every weapon or piece of armor was of the highest quality. Some of it is downright crap, just like today. |
I would caution against making too broad a statement concerning this theory. I say ths because it does not always hold true for all items. Once you start down this line of thought you are immediately going to encounter the fringe theories. The largest and most well known one that will show up is the one that pertains to butted mail. We know that butted mail was only used for ceremonial items as it is worthless for combat armour. Riveted mail can be made one of two ways. It is either good or it isn't. There is no middle ground here. If mail is not of good quality the person purchasing it will notice it right off. As such the company producing it will not be in business for long. With the exception of later period pieces, late 15th and into the 16th century, all of the mail I have studied has been of good quality. This is especially true of mail that was used as more of a primary defense. Now, there were some articles written that called into question the quality of mail, but the authors had failed to take into account the oxidation and corrosion that the links had experienced over time. They were going off the assumption that this is wat the mail looked like when new. Without a background in actual mail manufacture it is not possible to write about the subject in an accurate manner.