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Mark Griffin




Location: The Welsh Marches, in the hills above Newtown, Powys.
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PostPosted: Mon 01 Feb, 2016 7:55 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

a recent ebay sale, some bits from the Thames foreshore, usually date to 16th cent but hard to tell. a uk penny is 20mm


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Mart Shearer




Location: Jackson, MS, USA
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PostPosted: Mon 01 Feb, 2016 8:38 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Mark Griffin wrote:
a recent ebay sale, some bits from the Thames foreshore, usually date to 16th cent but hard to tell. a uk penny is 20mm


Looks like a German import. Fortunately they've photographed it with a couple of the rings flipped too, allowing confirmation of the wedge riveting.

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Mart Shearer




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PostPosted: Mon 01 Feb, 2016 8:54 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Luka Borscak wrote:
A few of my own pictures of supposedly roman mail from archeological museum in Zagreb:



One important point to note here is the overlap direction of the riveted rings.
Martijn Wijnhoven wrote:
From at least the 6th century onwards the ends of the overlap were positioned right over left; while in prior centuries, these were placed left over right (Wijnhoven, 2009: 34).


The left-hand helix rings are generally a good indication of Roman or very Early Medieval mail.



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Mart Shearer




Location: Jackson, MS, USA
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PostPosted: Mon 11 Apr, 2016 8:06 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

It's the pesky period at the end of the sentence being incorporated into the url.

Unfortunately, I don't see any armour, especially mail on the site.

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Eric S




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PostPosted: Mon 11 Apr, 2016 8:13 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Mart Shearer wrote:
It's the pesky period at the end of the sentence being incorporated into the url.

Unfortunately, I don't see any armour, especially mail on the site.
Mart, I see two pair of gauntlets, no mail as far as I can tell.....spam?
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Mart Shearer




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PostPosted: Wed 13 Apr, 2016 10:51 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

The auction house seems to specialize in firearms. I didn't see any mail currently offered.

Tom Biliter has noted the Royal Armouries now has an online catalog. Not all of the mail is photographed, and the pictures of others is not good resolution, or is b&w, but hopefully it will improve with age.
https://collections.royalarmouries.org/#/objects?search=mail&sort=relevance

The brass edging rings on shirt III.5 appear to be stamped with a Gothic "P".
https://collections.royalarmouries.org/object/rac-object-21024.html



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Eric S




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PostPosted: Wed 13 Apr, 2016 11:13 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Mart Shearer wrote:


Tom Biliter has noted the Royal Armouries now has an online catalog. Not all of the mail is photographed, and the pictures of others is not good resolution, or is b&w, but hopefully it will improve with age.
A very pathetic online image gallery, they were offline for quite some time and this is the best they could do with a world class collection???

Here is one example, how many European riveted mail coifs are there in the world, and then with alternating solid and wedge riveted links....and this is the best they could come up with, very amaturish in my opinion..
Quote:
Mail coif

Date
1331-1370

Object Number
III.28

Provenance
Possibly Old Tower Collection

Physical Description
Constructed of alternate rows of flat riveted and solid rings. The rivets of the riveted links are wedge-shaped, with domed heads 1.78 mm across. There is a vertical opening at the rear, and at the lower rear is a triangular section of the same mail fitted with the rivet heads on the inside, possibly a working-life modification.

Dimensions
Dimensions: riveted link diameter outside 10.39 mm, inside 7.69 mm, wire thickness 0.85 mm, wire width 1.41 mm; punched link diameter 10.47 mm, inside 7.22 mm, wire thickness 0.87 mm, wire width 2.10 mm. Whole hood height: 430mm; width: 380mm Weight: 3 lb 2 oz


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Eric S




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PostPosted: Wed 13 Apr, 2016 11:27 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Mart Shearer wrote:

Tom Biliter has noted the Royal Armouries now has an online catalog. Not all of the mail is photographed, and the pictures of others is not good resolution, or is b&w, but hopefully it will improve with age.
https://collections.royalarmouries.org/#/objects?search=mail&sort=relevance

The brass edging rings on shirt III.5 appear to be stamped with a Gothic "P".
https://collections.royalarmouries.org/object/rac-object-21024.html


Quote:
Mail shirt

Date
1400-1499

Object Number
III.5

Provenance
Possibly Old Tower Collection

Physical Description
The neck is edged with one row of brass rings and the cuffs with nine rows of brass rings. At the lower edge of the shirt are dags of brass mail. The brass mail is all riveted with iron wedges, and of mixed round and flat section brass links. The brass links at the neck and cuffs are all embossed with a Gothic minuscule a at the rear, while those of the lower edge are not. In the left sleeve is a tamga-like mark (serif T with a cross-bar) made in brass links formed of flat wire closed by round iron rivets. There are a few other brass links scattered around the shirt. The iron links of the body of the shirt are of D section wire, the flat side outwards, riveted with iron wedges, closed with high round domes on the outside. All the mail is of 10 mm links. The lowest 250 mm of the shirt is formed of thinner, more erratic riveted mail, which may be Turkish.

Dimensions
Dimensions: Length=111cm. Width=60cm (approx.) Weight: 25 lb 10 oz)



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Mario M.




Location: Croatia
Joined: 31 Mar 2016

Posts: 107

PostPosted: Sun 19 Jun, 2016 3:09 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Found this thread on search, decided to revive it with some mail from Croatia;

Item; Roman mail shirt
Location; Orešac (ancient Boletio)
Dating: 1st - 4th century



Piece of Roman mail found in Ciglenica;




No more info on this one, Croatian museum websites sites, if they even work or provide anything, suck for the most part.



.

“The stream of Time, irresistible, ever moving, carries off and bears away all things that come to birth and plunges them into utter darkness...Nevertheless, the science of History is a great bulwark against this stream of Time; in a way it checks this irresistible flood, it holds in a tight grasp whatever it can seize floating on the surface and will not allow it to slip away into the depths of Oblivion." - Anna Comnena
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James Arlen Gillaspie
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PostPosted: Sat 25 Jun, 2016 9:51 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

There has been a request for me to post the images and data I have on a shirt of mail weighing 37 lbs. I examined a couple of years ago. The solid links in the body of the shirt were 15 mm in diameter, with an inner diameter of 11 mm; there was, of course, lighter mail towards the extremities. I had an impression of extreme age as it had a great deal of wear on it, so much so that the backside of the links showed absolutely no trace of the rivets, and I only knew them from the damaged links. The wear could be from the fact that it had probably seen use well into the 20th century, however. It came from North Africa, which says nothing in particular about its origins, as smart collectors keep their eyes peeled for European mail that wound up there. I will simply post what I have and let people who know mail better than me decide what they will. I will only say that it didn't look to me like the 15th century mail I had in my hands in the back room of the Royal Armouries.


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Mart Shearer




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PostPosted: Sat 25 Jun, 2016 5:16 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Thanks James.
All riveted, and definitely wedge riveting. My presumption is that it's European, probably after c. 1350. Are there any photographs of the collar?

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Eric S




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PostPosted: Sat 25 Jun, 2016 6:46 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Mart Shearer wrote:
Thanks James.
All riveted, and definitely wedge riveting. My presumption is that it's European, probably after c. 1350. Are there any photographs of the collar?
Mart, all riveted?? It looks like solid links on this image but James should know.

James Arlen Gillaspie wrote:
There has been a request for me to post the images and data I have on a shirt of mail weighing 37 lbs. I examined a couple of years ago. The solid links in the body of the shirt were 15 mm in diameter, with an inner diameter of 11 mm; there was, of course, lighter mail towards the extremities.



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James Arlen Gillaspie
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PostPosted: Sat 25 Jun, 2016 7:59 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Solid and riveted. I was impressed by the height of the rivet overlap. The solid links were well rounded, by wear. The collar is original to the piece, but more corroded due to the common practice in North Africa of using leather thongs fed through the links horizontally to hold the collar up. I've seen a German example of that, too, if memory serves.
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Mart Shearer




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PostPosted: Sat 25 Jun, 2016 8:23 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

James,
In this photo, two riveted rings appear to be joined together (blue arrows). Likewise two riveted rings in one row (yellow arrows) are next to two riveted rings in the adacent row (red arrows). This whole photo is of an area either with some significant tailoring, e.g. contractions in a sleeve, or of a section which was added later, or another armor. I suspect it's likely that it's a later addition.



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Eric S




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PostPosted: Sat 25 Jun, 2016 9:14 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Mart Shearer wrote:
James,
In this photo, two riveted rings appear to be joined together (blue arrows). Likewise two riveted rings in one row (yellow arrows) are next to two riveted rings in the adacent row (red arrows). This whole photo is of an area either with some significant tailoring, e.g. contractions in a sleeve, or of a section which was added later, or another armor. I suspect it's likely that it's a later addition.


Matt, do not forget about repairs, I have an Indian mail and plate shirt which is constructed with theta links and riveted links, in the back there is a large area that was patched in with riveted and solid links, a period repair. I suspect that people making repairs made in the field or at a later date or by a different culture did not have the means to create the same type of links as the originals, or maybe they just did not care, it needed to be fixed and matching the existing links to the new replacements was not important.
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Eric S




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PostPosted: Sun 26 Jun, 2016 5:32 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

James Arlen Gillaspie wrote:
There has been a request for me to post the images and data I have on a shirt of mail weighing 37 lbs. I examined a couple of years ago. The solid links in the body of the shirt were 15 mm in diameter, with an inner diameter of 11 mm; there was, of course, lighter mail towards the extremities. I had an impression of extreme age as it had a great deal of wear on it, so much so that the backside of the links showed absolutely no trace of the rivets, and I only knew them from the damaged links. The wear could be from the fact that it had probably seen use well into the 20th century, however. It came from North Africa, which says nothing in particular about its origins, as smart collectors keep their eyes peeled for European mail that wound up there. I will simply post what I have and let people who know mail better than me decide what they will. I will only say that it didn't look to me like the 15th century mail I had in my hands in the back room of the Royal Armouries.


James thanks for the additional images and info. So here were have four hauberks of similar form with alternating rows of solid links and what appears to be wedge riveted links, all found outside of Europe, what are the chances of this, are there any known European examples that are similar in shape that are constructed with similar shaped alternating solid and wedge riveted links?


47lbs (questionable), believed to have been found outside of Kuwait. Demi riveted.


20+lbs, said to have been found in Saudi Arabia. Demi riveted.


28lb, located in Israel. Demi riveted.


37lbs, said to be found in North Africa. Demi riveted.


Last edited by Eric S on Sun 26 Jun, 2016 5:56 am; edited 4 times in total
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Mart Shearer




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PostPosted: Sun 26 Jun, 2016 5:46 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Demi-riveted construction is normal outside of Europe. The question is how many of those are demi-riveted with wedge (not rectangular or "slotted") riveting? Of those, how many show signs of being modified with rings of differing size, section and riveting, and where do those rings appear?

I am willing to accept that all riveted construction and/or wedge riveting were used outside of Europe if we can find evidence of it. I am also willing to accept that demi-riveted construction remained in use in Europe after all-riveted construction was introduced. We simply need to find when and where these trends existed. Keep challenging the current theories, Eric, and we might all learn something!

EDIT TO ADD: I think one point which you have locked in upon is the very important role of tailoring. In this case, the shape of the collars might be as important in determining the origin and chronolgy as the type of rings and riveting.

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Eric S




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PostPosted: Sun 26 Jun, 2016 7:03 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Mart Shearer wrote:
Demi-riveted construction is normal outside of Europe. The question is how many of those are demi-riveted with wedge (not rectangular or "slotted") riveting? Of those, how many show signs of being modified with rings of differing size, section and riveting, and where do those rings appear?

I am willing to accept that all riveted construction and/or wedge riveting were used outside of Europe if we can find evidence of it. I am also willing to accept that demi-riveted construction remained in use in Europe after all-riveted construction was introduced. We simply need to find when and where these trends existed. Keep challenging the current theories, Eric, and we might all learn something!

Mart, I am not challenging anything here, I have revised what I said to make it more understandable. I have simply posteds images and info on four alternating solid and apparently wedge riveted hauberks that are said to have been found outside of Europe. With the current evidence on these hauberks do you or anyone else see anything similar or dissimilar about them? Any comments on them in general?
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James Arlen Gillaspie
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PostPosted: Mon 27 Jun, 2016 7:03 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

The photos I chose are most representative of the links. I pulled and pushed things around quite a bit to get the shots. Eric, could you steer me towards my original post, so long ago? I can't seem to find it, and the close up next to the full shirt photo is bothering me; it doesn't look quite as I remember, as it doesn't seem to hint at how extreme the height of the rivet overlaps were. I wish I'd kept better records.

It is not unusual to see small swatches or a number of links of European mail used to repair Eastern mail. There was not much repair evident in this shirt. I've tracked down some more photos, one of which does show a repair, with a late link that is amusing for its ungainly chunkiness. Also a shot of one of the more corroded sections, which seems to be all riveted. On some links in some of the shots you can see that the head has been worn completely off.



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Eric S




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PostPosted: Mon 27 Jun, 2016 10:45 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

James Arlen Gillaspie wrote:
Eric, could you steer me towards my original post, so long ago? I can't seem to find it, and the close up next to the full shirt photo is bothering me; it doesn't look quite as I remember, as it doesn't seem to hint at how extreme the height of the rivet overlaps were. I wish I'd kept better records.

James, would it be on this thread or an different one?
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