New iron age armour has been found in Greece. Especially nice is the helmet in photo (see link)

Quote:

Greek archaeologists uncover ancient tombs Thu Sep 16, 3:00 pm ET ATHENS (AFP) – Greek archaeologists on Thursday announced the discovery of 37 ancient tombs dating back to the iron age in a cemetery near the ancient Macedonian capital of Pellas. Discoveries at the site included a bronze helmet with a gold mouthplate, with weapons and jewellery, in the tomb of a warrior from the 6th century BC. A total of 37 new tombs were discovered during excavation work this year, adding to more than 1,000 tombs since work began in 2000, researchers said. The tombs date from 650-280 BC, covering the iron age up to the Hellenistic period (323-146 BC). The tombs contain iron swords, spears and daggers, plus vases, pottery and jewellery made of gold, silver and iron. According to the researchers, the excavated area only represents five percent of the total site.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100916/sc_afp/g...0916190042

Let's see what else they will find- and hope they will publish some other photos of their finds...

Interesting find! It made me realize that I have no idea what Greek arms and armor looked like in the 6th Century. Were they basically the same as central Europe via Roman influence? Were their swords typical migration era swords?

Hi Chris I think your getting a little mixed up here. It 6th century BC not AD so way before the migration period or Roman influence. If my memory serves me well, in the 6th century BC, the Greeks
were wearing the armoury most people would associate with Ancient Greece, meaning bronze greaves, muscled cuirass and corinthian helm.

That gold mouth piece looks really interesting, I've never seen anything like it before. I sure I'm not alone in saying that I would really love to see more pictures from this find.

How do they know that the gold plate is a mouth guard?
1. Gold is completely useless as armour
2. None of the other armour pieces were made of gold.
3. There is no precedent for this type of mouth guard.

It's more likely that the gold mouthpiece was not to be used as armor during life, but was a funerary piece, an echo of the much earlier Mykenaian deathmasks.

Wonderful finds! Yes, it is frightening and maddening to discover that *most* archeological digs cover only a few percent of any site. And if we're really lucky, a few bits of all the stuff they did find will actually be published in English in 10 or 15 years!

Have to agree that the "mouth guard" is odd, probably something else entirely and clearly not for combat. Well, we'll stay tuned!

Khairete,

Matthew

Dan,
The article doesn't make any claim with regards to the function of the gold piece, but from the journalists depiction and the photo provided, one can assume that the body was buried with the gold at the level of the corpse's mouth. So they found a bronze helmet... with... a gold mouth plate. By the picture provided , it would also seem that the bronze helmet had a bit of gold leaf or guilding around the facial opening, also not very functional, so I will be curious to see what develops in terms of theories surrounding masks and such, I myself had never heard of a partial mask covering only the area around the mouth.
Silence is golden... I wonder how old that expression is !