Greetings forum members, I am an engineering student studying ergonomics currently. Our class has a main research paper that I have been approved for on the ergonomics of ancient armors as my topic. I am looking to find any research studies done or professional opinions/observations about various suits of armor from various cultures before the advent of gunpowder. Areas of specific focus would be japanese/asian armors, greek and roman, as well as european medieval armors. If you have any insights or can direct me to any specifics it would greatly help me with my research paper.

Forgive me for sounding a little haughty but do you mean research on pretty much all armour from across the world from ancient times to roughly the 15th century? That's a heck of a lot of papers....

professional opinions/observations on what aspects? We are all happy to help but that's a huge area of research.

How long is this paper? You don't seem to have done even precursory research yet and your scope needs to be dramatically tightened unless it's a gigantic project, otherwise your work will have no room for real substance. Adequately covering the change over time in ergonomics of just western European armor 1300-1650 would be difficult even in a 10,000 word project.

I'm not sure why you specified before the invention of gunpowder, that really limits your project since after the widespread use of gunpowder armorsmiths began to make some really interesting design decisions. European militaries began to really push the limit of what a soldier was willing to wear. It seems like you're more interested in the ancient rather than medieval period though, if that's the case just focus on that period and don't spread yourself thin.

You need to do your own research first and come back here with some specific questions or stumbling blocks. Your University should have subscriptions to various journals and should be able to interlibrary loan and books they don't have. If you can find it, Arms & Armor of the Medieval Knight by David Edge and Miles Paddock is a good primer on the history of western armor. myArmoury forum member Dan Howard's Bronze Age Military Equipment is a short but focused look at bronze age equipment. Check out the myArmoury book list http://www.myArmoury.com/books/ourlist.php for more sources, although many of them can be hard to find or expensive. After you lay the groundwork you need to get into the primary sources, most of which are available online these days.

I think this is an interesting project. The main factors you probably want to take into consideration while doing your research are weight, mobility, and comfort. For helmets vision and hearing impairment become important.

My two cents to a fellow engineering student would be to seek out either a world class armorer, or someone with an armor made by a world class armorer and do a study of that reproduction armor. If someone like Tobias Capwell (a curator at the wallace collection who owns http://www.myArmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=7687) was willing to talk about the mobility constraints of his custom armor, as a mix of personal experience and empirical measurements (weights, amount and type of articulation, mounting points, etc.) you could present a valuable research paper on the subject.

Or get in contact with Robert R. MacPherson, one of the best armorers alive, and ask him about your topic for a range of armors in some specific period or about a single armor he has built based on an original.
http://www.lightlink.com/armory/armory.html

The other option would be to find a local museum with a complete, vetted armor and beg them to let you examine and measure it, then do a study on that specific armors weight, degree of mobility, etc.

The topic "German armors from 1450-1500" could fill a multi volume reference set, so I share the assertion that your topic is WAY too broad to write an effective paper. But analyzing one period armor from a modern engineers standpoint would make for a highly effective research paper.


the first time i saw this armor, all that ran through my head was "damn... this is how a suit of armor is supposed to fit"

I agree with the others that the field of inquiry needs to be tightened if you don't want the project to get too scattered or end up really shallow. If I were you, and assuming that you're not intending to write several volumes on this topic in the immediate future, I'd pick just one suit of really awesome (and heavily documented) armor and focus on that alone.

The heavily documented part is so you don't have to cite "some dudes on teh interwebs" with regard to any information gleaned from this thread. Even though this forum hosts some really brilliant people who know their stuff, you should trace things back to published sources for the purposes of your bibliography. ;)

Sorry I was not very clear on the scope of the project when I first posted. I am looking primarily to see if there are any other known studies for armor ergonomics such as the one that the University of Leeds conducted recently by placing reenactors in 15th century replica suits and running them on a treadmill while hooked up to breathing and pulse monitoring equipment. If there turn out not to be then I will most likely be following Tom King's suggestion. I dd not want to limit the initial search for data to any one culture or time period because from the initial searches I have done there have not been very many of them done.

Fair enough. Keep in mind that the Leeds study was deeply flawed, but flawed studies are excellent for discussion in a paper. Unfortunately similar tests are pretty much nonexistant in an academic setting. Like Tom King said, there are plenty of people who will tell you they can run a 10k in their armor but it's not exactly a published study that you can make use of.

Well Tom, considering myself and may others from our group walked in full armor, myself wearing my helm, from our encampment to the joust field, fought in a semi choreographed melee, and walked back know that you can walk quite a bit in armor especially if you are conditioned to do so. Though we are poor re-enactors with cobbled together suits, with some exception. I will say that return walk was BRUTAL LOL! None of this can apply to the paper of the topic originator of course.

I saw this video on youtube the other day, it's pretty interesting, although some view point may be different.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjKbi7YUNaI